Psychotic Release Syndrome
by TheRockNRollBeauty
Summary: "A few golden hairs are scattered over a crinkled pillow. Ivan doesn't think about the sunflower downstairs with its petals missing as if a pair of rough hands tore them away." Insanity, angst, death. RussAme. No happy endings.
1. Dreaming

**Trololol angst, guys. For seriously. Because I'm as much of an angst/horror/guro whore as I am a fluff!whore for Russiamerica. **

**This particular piece of infinite angst is inspired by the album **_**Trainwreck**_** by BoysNightOut, who are **_**severely **_**underrated, I swear. In some indirect way this album has inspired almost everything i've written over the past year, and I realized a little bit ago that it can be really fucking relevant to my favored brand of the Cold War pairing. So yeah. Listen to the album, read the poorly written angst. **

**Yeah. No real happy endings on this one, sorry**

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**Ch 1: Dreaming**

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_"You scream "wake up!" inside your own body_

_But you're buried,or suffocating,or worse._

_Tonight it's worse. Tonight the screaming hurts."_

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_

Ivan wakes to the downy tickle of grass on his face. Blinking, he rises, sits, finds himself sprawled in the middle of somebody's lawn. He tilts his head, looks around, recognizing the house behind him as one on a familiar suburban block_—_not far from Alfred's house, where he had been sleeping.

He looks down to his side, half expecting to find Alfred asleep next to him, dressed in the sunflower pattern pajamas Ivan had bought for him that made the Russian's heart throb with joy_—_

_He remembers buying them for Alfred a few weeks ago. After a few months of being together the Russian seemed to get Alfred's taste down pat. Despite his heroic and "manly" proclamations, Ivan figured out that the American was slightly inclined to things more childish in nature. So Ivan knew that when Alfred unwrapped the matching blue pajamas dotted with vibrantly colored sunflowers his face would light up with a boyish glee and erupt into the brilliant white smile that made Ivan's heart flutter._

But Alfred is not there, there is nothing but damp grass: running his fingers through the blades is nothing like stroking his American boy's warm locks as he lies peaceful and untroubled and _oh so adorable__—_

Ivan blinks, pulling himself out of day dreams. Or_—_he looks at the sky_—_night dreams, apparently. It had not been long since he had last been with Alfred, then. Doubtless the American is still sleeping back at the house. So how had he ended up outside?

_He remembers looking down from his book and seeing Alfred asleep, he remembers smiling to himself and gently petting the side of the American's face, swiping away a trail of saliva with a soft chuckle__—_

It's strange, he thinks, being all the way out here_—_stranger still that he is unable to remember anything after Alfred going to sleep and before waking up on the grass. The stretch of blank time is puzzling and problematic. He is sure he stayed up long past Alfred, he had been reading some Tolstoy, reminiscing about the past_—_

He frowns. Something doesn't feel right. It feels strange without the American's warm body next to him, that reassuring presence. Ivan needs to go back to him, just to be reminded of the love and affection that he knows will always be here.

He eases himself up from the ground and wipes the damp pieces of grass from where they've stuck to his body, notices that he's still wearing his sleeping clothes.

_Perhaps I have just been sleepwalking, da?_ It's not a common occurrence for him by any means, but still, Ivan knows he tends to have very_—_realistic dreams.

His feet quickly take him down the familiar block where he often would take walks with Alfred, if only to force the boy to take an outdoor break from television or video games_—_

Now in front of Alfred's house, he walks up to the porch, puts his hand on the doorhandles, forgetting for a moment that he doesn't have the key, only to find it creak open; unlocked.

The anxiety only increases as he enters to find the small table by the floor knocked over. He takes a small step forward and hears a soft crunch under his foot. Squinting at the dark floor, he lifts his foot, swallows_—_

The vase that had been sitting on the small table lies in pieces on the floor, the small bouquet of sunflowers he had picked out for Alfred the other day lying spread out over the floor. One of the flowers has been damaged, crushed under his foot, a couple of its petals scattered on the hardwood floor.

He feels a twinge of fear that sticks him in the heart and forces his legs to stumble as fast as he can down the hallway towards the room that he shares with Alfred.

Ivan doesn't know why he stops in front of the door, nor why he bothers to knock when it is already half open. But he does anyway.

"Sunflower? Alfred, _dorogoy_, are you awake?" He whispers, praying silently for a reply from the man who is surely sleeping just several feet away.

_Nothing._

Alfred must be asleep. The boy is quite a deep sleeper.

It is only at that point that Ivan becomes aware of a soft noise coming from the room. Not the soft, comforting noises of Alfred's quiet snores, but the low din of music, coming from what Ivan can only assume is the radio.

_Why is the radio on? Surely Alfred is not awake listening to music at such an hour? Perhaps he had set the alarm to a strange time on accident?_

Ivan snakes his hand around the doorknob, curses as he hand shakes _for no reason at all, once he opens the door he will find his darling American curled up and waiting for Ivan to hold him close__—_

Ivan eases the door open and takes a step into the bedroom, a stray thought hitting him that he'll have to buy Alfred new sunflowers in the morning.

* * *

_"Our favorite song's been repeating all night._

_Someone call an ambulance because something's not right."_

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_

**So yeah. I'm pretty sure that you can tell from that that nothing happy is going to come from this story.**


	2. Waking

**Next chapter, eh? The proverbial shit really hits the fan in this one. Also, i changed the rating cause Im thinking of putting dream/hallucination sex or whatever in a later chapter.**

**Its my own personal headcanon that nations **_**must **_**have some kind of post traumatic stress, especially Russia, given his insanity/crazy bloody history and all. **

**Please read and review, tell me anything i could improve upon, tell me i'm a bad person for doing this to my favorite characters AND my otp, etc. The usual. **

**Also, I realize that I completely rape the dash (this thing "****_—_****") when I write angst. /sigh.**

**Ch 2: Waking**

* * *

_"Marvel at this madman as this make-shift monster rips through the room._

_Watch in in fear as he comes completely unglued."_

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_

_"Cолнышко?__" _he whispers, his voice aggravatingly timid and small in the pervading silence. The room seems too big and deathly absent, the bed by the blue light of the window violently disheveled and missing of its sheets, the nightstand pushed askew from its original position. Ivan's eyes trace the room with fear that is no longer contained.

_Alfred is gone,_ he thinks briefly before he pushes it out of his head.

_Nonsense. He is hiding. It is probably one of his silly games. Even if someone had made their way into the house, Alfred would've had no problem taking down whoever it would be. It is utter nonsense to even entertain the notion that Alfred could possibly be gone._

Ivan takes quiet steps further and calls out again, his voice perhaps a little louder and more strained this time. Though rationality calls him to check out the closet or perhaps the rest of the house for his darling boy, he's drawn to the bed, the last place where he saw him, the last memory of the boy before that frustrating and terrifying blank space.

Tolstoy is on the floor, he notices, open with its pages wrinkled and its spine likely ruined. Ivan takes another tentative step.

He feels something hard and cold underneath his foot and, remembering the sunflower, jerks upward. There are few objects that the Russian knows through mere blind touch, but he recognizing the delicate coolness and immediately leans down to pick Alfred's glasses up from the floor. Like the book, it had been knocked off the nightstand. He moves to put them back on the nightstand, hesitates, and instead tucks the folded spectacles in his shirt collar.

Ivan crawls onto the bed and smooths his hands along the remaining rumpled blankets, perhaps looking for a clue to jog his memory lapse, or perhaps a sign of where the American had run off to.

A few golden hairs are scattered over a crinkled pillow. Ivan doesn't think about the sunflower downstairs with its petals missing as if a pair of rough hands tore them away_—_

_He doesn't need sunflowers that break and die so easily, elegantly perched on tabletops with pleasant sight and smell but none of the comforting warmth of loving embraces. Besides, he can buy new sunflowers with thick, full petals. He doubts that he could find another like Alfred. _

His fingers touch the vague indentation that Alfred's body left, pleased despite himself to trace the cooling vestiges of that too precious body heat, and despite his anxiety a small smile quirks at his lips.

Something creeps up in his mind, the familiar sight and sensation of the bed underneath him triggers something, as does the faded warmth.

_Ivan feels his eyes drooping and he presses a silk bookmark__—__a gift from Alfred made of soft red, white and blue fabric; he had bought one for American too, though it hardly saw much use__—__into the dusty book and sets it gently on the nightstand before leaning down to remove the pair of glasses perched crookedly on his love's nose, carefully folding them and giving the frames a loving caress before setting them aside._

_He turns off the light and shifts on the bed until he is facing the blue light of the window and nestles down into the cocoon of sheets that have been already thoroughly warmed by the other's body. After a contented exhale of air he takes the opportunity to pull the American's body closer to his, and despite his growing drowsiness manages to place a final open mouthed kiss to the others lips, warm with drool, a surge of happiness moving through his body as his sunflowers mouth quirks upwards in a contented sigh. Ivan wishes his darling pleasant dreams as he falls gently at first into sleep, lulled by the feeling of the other's softly pulsing neck on his fingers as he absentmindedly traces patterns into his skin. _

Snapping out of the sudden surge of memory, Ivan sees that the sheets have been tugged off of the bed onto the floor near the wall, currently hidden from the Russian's view by the edge of the mattress. Crawling across the bed with shaky arms, fingers clenching tightly into the sheets, he cranes over the small space between the bed and the wall. He sees something still, too still tangled up within the white sheets nestled in the narrow area. The heavy stone in his heart settles in his stomach and threatens to bottom out.

_He can feel the tremors of the nightmares before they begin, because Ivan hardly sleeps anymore, his consciousness content to float in the terrifying in between of wakefulness and dream__—_

_The semi comforting black of dreamless sleep dissolves and the picture of a frantic street fades in like a movie screen. _

_People scream, bodies fall, shots ring out, blood is spilled. _

_A man, a soldier, by his Imperial garb, suddenly fills Ivan's vision, not his face or his body but his eyes that are unremarkably brown yet capable of striking instantaneous fear__—_

_The man, he aims at him, he aims at his head and Ivan feels the horror run dry in his throat and stick in his limbs, seizing them up__—_

_He flinches as the bullet grazes his shoulder but recovers and barrels forward as the man aims again at his chest__—_

_Ivan tackles the man with a roar and pins him to the floor and his hands are on his throat suddenly and Ivan tightens his grip and slams the soldier's head on the flat stone of the street, the rifle skittering away from his grasp. The soldier growls and tries to grab at Ivan's neck but Ivan violently shakes him as he starts to throttle the life out of him. _

_The soldier thrashes and pushes up and the two are rolling on the group until Ivan finally rights himself and slams the other into the ground again. His left elbow strikes painfully against something-the edge of a bed? Strange thing, beds in the middle of the street__—_

_But Ivan is given no time to think as he feels the soldier's gloved hands, hands that feel so bizarrely familiar and shockingly small and weak, clamp on his forearms in an attempt to pull them off, accompanied by growls of his name and Ivan wonders how the soldier knows his name but doesn't stop in his assault__—_

_He brings his face close to the soldier's, face clenched in a snarl, his eyes angry with self preservation. Survival, because if Ivan has been good at one thing in his life, it is surviving. _

_But suddenly, the red brown stained face of the soldier dissolves into that of a young man with brilliantly gold hair and wide blue eyes streaming with tears face reddened as he struggles to breath__—_

_From beyond the white noise of the streets he can hear choked gasps of his name broken by sobs and pants, he hears the soldier begging for mercy, for help__—_

_Ivan is still caught in the throes of dreams even as he feels the faltering touch of hands on his wrists trying to pry away the death grip locked on his neck and Ivan feels a twinge of sympathy, of guilt and wrongness that begs him to stop__—_

_But if Ivan doesn't kill the soldier than the man will shoot him, maybe not now, but maybe later when he's vulnerable, spring upon him while he's sleeping__—_

_The soldier chokes and shudders one final time and now the soldier has blue eyes set in his bloodstained face that fade and flutter and roll upwards and close._

_Ivan keeps his hands tight on the others throat as he comes down from the hysteria of his dreams. Suddenly, Ivan draws back from the other's neck as if the touch has burned him. He finds his body shaking still caught in the snatches of nightmare but with dulled and creeping realization crawling up his spine. _

_He throws the twisted bedsheets over the soldier's face and kicks himself away from the body, chest still heaving painfully from the exertion and from something else, a dawning fear and sadness that tugs at his heart__—_

_The bedroom melts into the bloodstained street and vice versa as he staggers out through the doorway not looking back. _

Ivan's brought out of his reverie by his own choked inhale. He remembers. And suddenly he is too horrorstruck to remove the twisted sheets away. He puts his trembling legs over the other side of the bed, his feet brushing against something solid and _undoubtedly there_ beneath the thin fabric of the sheets.

His mind feels disconnected from his body, his head light and emotions floating around unsettled as he leans down and slides his hands under the bundle and effortlessly lifts it, as if it were a rag doll.

The bundle is heavy, unresponsive. _Cold. _

Ivan cradles it in his arms, caught between a wary, delicate touch that fears it shattering or turning to dust and a rougher rocking that tries to coerce it into moving, to waking, to _breathing-_

Daringly, with shaky fingers he pulls back on the sheet and forces a shaky smile when he sees the bundle's face, still caught in the expression of peaceful sleep that he'd left him in. He pulls back the sheet a little further but seizes up and retreats at the first sight of purpling fingerprints. With the sheets pulled up like this, Alfred is sleeping, the sheets are so tightly wrapped about his body because the room is always too cold whenever Ivan is here_—_

_It certainly was an interesting place to sleep, wasn't it? But then again, Alfred was quite the eccentric individual, so Ivan couldn't quite put it past him. _

"I am sorry for moving you, _солнышко_. But I can hardly be imaging how these places you sleep can be comfortable at all, yes?" His voice doesn't belong to him. The voice that is so calm, speaking with unhitched and dry breath even as the Russian screams and curses on the inside.

Ivan shifts Alfred up closer on him until his head lolls against his shoulder so the Russian can press his nose and lips into the soft skin and try to ignore the fact that the American's heat has, for the first time, dropped below that of the pale Siberian tundras in the plains of the Russian's body.

He finds that there are still tracks of wetness on the quiet face so Ivan gently licks the remaining tears away.

"A-all better, see?" He touches the fragile and reddened skin around the American's eyes, resisting the urge to pry open the heavy eyelids to see the glimmer of rheumy blue underneath. "There is no reason to cry anymore, sunflower." He soothes, although his voice finally breaks past the point of restraint and illusion and becomes breathy and pained.

Ivan feels desperately cold, more frigid than normal, but he knows that he has always been able to warm himself by holding his precious sunflower close. This time wouldn't be any different.

* * *

_"His few, final moments must have been a nightmare in waking,_

_Victimized, violently shaking, My God,_

_Make this a dream because I really can't believe that he's gone."_

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**Ah, poor Ivan. The guy can't even go two chapters into this fic of mine without being traumatized. I feel for the poor guy, this was a little hard to write, even for me. **

**The flashback that Russia's having is based on the Bloody Sunday massacre, but I didn't want to spend that much detail on that, so it can just be anything, really. **

**Copious amounts of denial, angst, and hopefully other characters to come in the following chapters. Now go read something fluffy and give Vanya and Al a hug or two. **


	3. Sentencing, Part One

**Apology time! The truth is I had the beginning of this story really well fleshed and thought out, and the ending as well, but not really how to get from one to the other. I was still struggling with how exactly I wanted this chapter to play out, so I decided to split it into two, cause I felt bad for not updating as promptly as I should have. So here's this!**

**This chapter is **_**slightly**_** fillerish and a lil short, kind of in a different vein than the first two. But its still important to read, so, yay. **

**Ch 3: Sentencing, Part One**

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_"Inside this ringing room,_

_Though once subdued, the silence seems to sing."_

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_

Ivan hums quiet, broken strains of Russian melodies he's heard over the years, babbling on without rhyme or reason just to drown out the quiet of the room.

He traces the outline of Alfred's lips with his thumb, mouth sticky and cold instead of wet and warm. Numbly he traces patterns with the wetness in the American's skin. His mind can't process, cluttered with visions of bloodstained streets and sheets and the sensation on his palms of life leaving a body that was once so vibrant and full of warmth and love_—_

He slides out from under Alfred's body and careful lays his head back, pulling the pillow from Ivan's side of the bed and tucking it under the heavy head. He slips off the bed with a deafening creak and shuffles into the adjacent bathroom, feet entangling the sheets and almost tripping him. He clutches the edge of the sink, fingernails scraping against the porcelain. Ivan turns on the warm water and splashes it on his face, rubbing deep circles into his cold skin and absentmindedly trying to bring himself out of his numbness.

He can't look at the mirror so instead lets his eyes fall around the object scattered around the sink. Alfred's toothbrush, blue, lying next to Ivan's red; the bubblegum flavored floss that America used twice daily to preserve that prize winning smile. The small bottle of cologne the Alfred would splash on on occasion to only further accent and beautify that heavenly scent of his_—_

Ivan grabs the bottle and in one swift movement crushes it, tiny shards of glass sticking into his skin, the watery scent spilling between his fingers and leaking down his wrist, drips of his blood suspended in the golden liquid like insects frozen within amber. He palms the scent over his face and into his hair, down his neck, licking off the bittersweet taste into his mouth and lapping the remaining pools in his palm like a starving kitten.

Without bothering to pull the shards of glass from his palm, Ivan stumbles out of the bathroom back towards the bed where Alfred lies in the same position the Russian had left him. With one knee on the bed he leans over the other's body, eye catching a flash of silver dangling beneath him. Ivan's fingers find the metal frame of Alfred's glasses, still folded into the collar of his shirt. He untucks the arms of the spectacles from the shirt and shakily places them back on the American's face, smiling slightly with relief at how _normal_ Alfred suddenly looks. He touches his hair with a perfume hand, trying to transfer the scent back to the one who _needs it_. His wrist brushes against Alfred's cheek and he detests the chilled shiver that runs up his spine.

Ivan can't stand being in the room with the pervading cold any longer. He gets to his feet with Alfred in his arms and exits the room, padding softly through the hallway.

_So many times he had picked up a sleeping Alfred from where he was curled up on the couch, video game controller or remote hanging from his hand, and carried him back to their room through these same hallways__—_

He makes his way to the darkened living room, nearly stumbling over the pair of sneakers that Alfred had carelessly kicked off in the evening before leaping onto the overstuffed couch, lodging into the cushions for his daily five hours of TV watching. Ivan settles on the very same couch and sets the American in his lap, leaning back into the cushions and sighing.

_How many times, sitting like this, watching movies and listening to the American babble in that loving way__—_

Ivan loses track of time as he sits with the American's body in his arms and runs his fingers through the golden hair. His purple eyes are dulled and unfocused as he waits out the night on the couch. _The night__—_the night that keeps Alfred asleep so he waits for the sun to shine through, because the sun is Alfred and Alfred is the sun and when the other rises he is sure to follow and disintegrate all of his numbness with a blazing smile_—_

Sure enough, Ivan can see the first vestiges of sunlight peeking out from the bottom of the front door, visible in the adjacent hallway. The edges of the door look golden and otherworldly, a harbinger of the sun that's sure to chase away Ivan's doubts and the deathly still silence of sleep.

He recalls the first time America brought him into the house to live, and how Alfred had chirpily suggested that he carry Ivan over the threshold like a newlywed bride.

_"Dude, trust me, I can definitely pick you up without dropping you."_

_"I do not think so, sunflower."_

_"I totally can. Watch!"_

_Alfred grapples for the larger male, trying to hook his arms under the Russian's legs and laughing all the way. It's not until Ivan feels one of his feet leave the ground that he decides to retaliate, snaking an arm around Alfred's lower back and grabbing his thigh. _

_Ignoring Alfred's yelps of surprise he hoists the boy into his arms and bounds over the threshold, giggling like a small child with a brand new toy. _

_Alfred puts on a mock pout and pinches one of the Russian's cheeks._

_"That's just like you, asshole. Always making me the girl."_

_Ivan smirks and traces the curve of the boy's thigh under his blue jeans with a finger. _

_"Can you be blaming me, dorogoy? Truthfully, you are simply adorable, and have such girlish and full hips__—_"

_"That's it. You are so not getting any tonight." _

_"Oh?" Ivan leans in and captures Alfred's lips, drinking in the American's soft laughter as he winds his arms around Ivan's neck. Alfred hums contently as Ivan pulls back and presses another kiss to his cheek. _

_"Okay, well, maybe not." _

The golden crack under the door grows bigger as light filters through the pale, see through curtains and Ivan can see the house across the street with its imitation of classic New England architecture and the perfect green of a manicured lawn, the lawn where only hours ago he had found himself _wondering where Alfred had gone, where is he now because Alfred is warmth and if warmth isn't here then Alfred isn't and he needs to find him and bring him back__—_

Suddenly, a loud buzzing noise is heard, causing the Russian to jerk up, eyes and ears searching for the sound of the noise. He sees a small square of artificial light buzzing on the coffee table, loudly vibrating against the glossy wood. It takes a few moments of the invasive buzzing before Ivan realizes what the object is.

_Alfred's cell phone._

His arms curl around Alfred's body protectively at the reminder of an outside intrusion into their own personal tragedy.

* * *

_"Nothing makes sense anymore_

_When murder's just a mistake that you have made."_

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_

**I wonder who's calling? Well, it's someone who's certainly going to double the angst factor in the next part. **

**Poor Vanya's starting to go through denial! I figure at this point his brain is kind of shutting down a bit, making him numb so he doesn't have to fully comprehend Alfred's death and his own role in it. Poor baby D:**

**Oh god the whole thing with the cologne reminds me of this one oneshot I have like half written based on the movie ****The Perfume**** that has Ivan killing everyone and making a perfume out of their bodies...yeah. It's a weird movie. **


	4. Sentencing, Part Two

**Next chapter! Alright! I'm really in the swing of things when it comes to this fic, I had major writer's inspiration this week and planned out pretty much how the rest of it is going to go. I probably wouldn't have continued this without my awesome reviewers, so give yourselves a pat on the back, y'all made it happen. This is the first long hetalia fic that I've written, and I'm glad that it's getting a good response. **

**Anyway, here's the second part of chapter three! Like the first part, its kind of different from how the first two chapters were, in that it mostly describes what is going on, as opposed to what the characters are feeling. I suppose its a little fillerish, but it marks a major change in the direction in which the plot is going. **

**Also, Angliya=England in Russian. Just like, fyi. **

**Sentencing, Part Two**

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_"Nothing makes sense anymore,_

_So a sick and guilty man will be born again with conscience saved."_

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Ivan feels his heart seize as he sees the name displayed on the screen. He presses his fingers into the sides of the phone, knowing that he could crush it easily to protect himself and Alfred from the intrusive man, the only one ever able to provide a wedge between him and his darling.

His finger hovers over the phone's buttons_—__buttons_,_ Alfred had come to hate phones with buttons, instead taking every opportunity to drag Ivan into one of his electronics stores and show him the sleek, glossy phones without the inconvenience of button, the mere sight of which caused Alfred to continuously drop not too subtle hints to Ivan that the person who bought him such a device might be entitled to certain "favors," favors Ivan suspected he would greatly enjoy, so he planned to buy Alfred the phone the very next time he had an excuse to__—_

Somewhere in his reverie he decides to answer the call. The moment Ivan clicks on the phone and presses it to his ear he is assaulted with the crackly voice, bathed in a distinctive British accent and speaking so quickly that the Russian numbed mind can only pick up snippets.

"_—_just called me in an utter panic asking me what the hell you are up to_—_you absolute idiot_—_stock market collapsing_—_public unrest_—_on my way, coming over there_—_government is entirely out of control_—_tell me what the hell is going on_—_he can't even contact your boss_—_"

Ivan opens and closes his mouth, unable to form words as what _Angliya_ says processes in his brain, his words coming clearer.

"Alfred?" The voice calls out, the anxiety all the more prevalent in its tone. "Alfred, what is going on? Are you hurt? Speak to me, you_—_"

"He is not here." Ivan can barely believe the voice is coming from him.

"Russia?" The voice on the other end stops. "W-what are you doing answering Alfred's phone? Put the git on right now, I have to speak w_—_"

Ivan clicks the phone off and lets it fall with a clack to the floor, causing the battery to pop out. _Angliya's_ words circle like vultures in his mind, over the thought that now Alfred would surely need a new phone, he would buy him one as soon as he could_—_

_Wait. Wait._ Ivan is broken from dreams of gifts and grateful smiles as he is struck by a stray thought. Something _Angliya_ had said, _Angliya_ had said_—_

"_On my way, coming over there__—_"

_Angliya_, _Angliya_ was going to be here, be here soon, oh God no no _no_, the other nations had come for the conference, the conference in the nearest city, _oh no no no _how could he forget_—_

If _Angliya_ comes in here, he will make a fuss, he will try to take Alfred away_—_

The bubble is about to burst. Its boundaries quiver from the buffets of wind from the outside.

Arthur wouldn't be the one to take Alfred out of their home. Ivan would. It was only right. Before Arthur had a chance he would take Alfred, he would leave with him_—_

He crosses Alfred's hands on his chest and smoothes down the blonde hair, shaking hand pulling up the collar of his pajamas to hide the marks on his windpipe. He picks up the boy's body and shifts so that the head lolls against his shoulder. He crosses to the entrance hall, in front of the door, which, he notices with a small nudge, is still unlocked. He pushes the door open a crack, allowing a sliver of the grey morning light to peek through. He breathes deeply, choking at the little bit of the world that he can see beyond the sanctuary of his dead lit home; a foreign car parked in front of the walkway_—_

Ivan takes a moment to tilt Alfred's head upwards, treating himself to a deep, delving kiss, closing his eyes and drawing his tongue across the soft pink lips as he pulls back. The slam of a car door signals the end of his tender moment.

Creaking the door open with a foot, he carries Alfred back over the threshold and out into the cold.

* * *

Ivan knows that _Angliya_ knows the moment he steps over the door's threshold and the gray morning light washes over him and Alfred. He knows but even as the Russian shuffles down the walkway towards him he keeps the same look on his face, a settling shock and surprise as the pair of eyes flick from the shaky Russian to the still form in his arms, a look that remains on his face even when Russia stops a few feet from him and bores into his eyes with dark purple pits.

Ivan gives the Brit a shaky, off balanced smile.

"He's very cold, _Angliya_. It's so strange."

And then there's an explosion.

Ivan hears shrill shouts of anger and he feels small fists beating his chest, then those same hands grabbing at Alfred trying to pull him away_—_

He reflexively pulls at Alfred closer but the man seems insistent on engaging in the silly bout of tug of war, fighting against these possessive green eyes_—_

Suddenly angered with the other's attempts to rob him of his sunflower, he pushes his substantial bulk past the other's small form; even as he feels furious hands clutch at his coat and shrieks pierce his ears he drags himself down to the sidewalk breaking free of the Brit's grasp_—_

Ivan tries to flee with Alfred in his arms but his legs betray him and tangle together and he trips and falls on the sidewalk but can't get up once he's sees Alfred' perfect face marred with the rough scrape of the concrete_—_

He feels hands on his arms trying to pull him away and suddenly Alfred is torn from him and his arms are being grasped behind his back as he's suddenly lugged to his feet_—_

He can't seem to recognize the faces surrounding him and pinning down upon him as if he were a wild beast found mauling a young child, holding tightly onto him as if they expect him to run or fight back, but all Ivan is concerned with is finding Alfred, to see where his sunflower has run off to_—_

But he is being hauled away, a straightjacket of arms binding him, off of the concrete walkway and towards the foreign looking car_—_

The air is abuzz with various sound but above all Ivan hears someone screaming, screaming like a mother who's woken to find her child dead in its bed_—_

Someone shoves him and he hits leather seats. Absentmindedly he presses his nose against the cool glass of the window, looking at the scene outside as if through fogged lens. Craning his neck he can just barely see a prone body on the soft green lawn fringed by tall figures as another man is bent over it, mouth moving in silent despair and hands pressing on the other's chest, fingers searching for warmth against a still neck_—_

And it seems like a dream all another dream happening before his eyes as he gazes on it from beyond a glazed barrier: he's a viewer of someone else's tragedy, off in some distant world far far away from him and his precious little life.

* * *

Ivan decides the other nations are blind.

Talking about America as if he's gone, as if he no longer exists. The fools sit around the glossy conference table in a makeshift court with him at the head, hands cuffed behind the back of a chair and ankles bound to the legs. He's not sure what expression he wears on his face, but by the look of several of the countries daring to sit the closest to him, they must find his expression completely unhinged.

_All idiots and cowards, ready to condemn but unwilling to believe the truth, the truth that Ivan knows. _

Nations don't just die that easily, especially not nations like America. Vibrant and so young and so absolutely blazing with promise. Nations that bore their scars well and strong upon their backs.

_Alfred had shown him his scars, one night as he lay bare and vulnerable, eyes still wet from passion; wrapped in sheets in Ivan's arms he had guided pale fingers over the marks, some white and faded like the messy line across his belly and others still dark and fresh and angry red like the twin scars on his shoulders, and Ivan had pressed a kiss to each one of them and in turn he had tugged down his scarf and shown the little American the web of thick tissue that had formed across his windpipe__—_

He can't understand why they would assume Alfred is not strong enough to resist any trials thrown at him. He has rebounded from worse before, he is strong, sometimes too strong for his own good. Ivan knows that strength, knows how difficult it is to push that power in submission, even when both parties are willing and caught up in the throes of romance_—_

And yet through the filmy patina that seems to have settled on his brain he can hear them conversing_—__we can still hold his country together, it's too big to fall, he might be gone but we need to keep it all together and preserve order and protect his people__—_it all seems like a conspiracy to the Russian, as the other nations plot to strip America apart and treat his nation like a global puppet.

But worst, worse than the other countries seeming disregard for Alfred's whereabouts, worst of all is that they think that it's Ivan's doing, that it's the Russian that committed a silly act that _never_ happened.

Still, the others continue their meaningless conference, pretending that the ominous Russian is not present even as they debate over what is to be done with him.

He huffs and wriggles slightly at the bonds tying him to the chair. The others already had his fate in their silly heads, had already decided to try him for a false crime, instead of looking for him, instead of looking for Alfred_—_

"Execute him."

Ivan's eyes flick upwards. He misses the shellshocked Englishman from earlier, whose eyes had been filled with tears and worry, the shaking, vulnerable man he had been when Alfred had disappeared.

"Now, now, _mon chéri_, it is obvious that he is sick in the head, it is not his fault_—_"

"To hell it isn't! I refuse to believe that he didn't plan this, that this whole "relationship" wasn't just a facade, just a plot to get Alfred to this point_—_"

"Medication. Counseling. He is _ill, _he needs _help_, do you not understand?"

"Help? _Help?_ How can you, how can you possibly_—_"

"We cannot just _execute_ him. His country and government have done no wrong."

"But he-he_—_" The voice cuts off with a guttural choke. Ivan feels the eyes on him and looks up, lazily observing the green pools attempting to drown him from the other side of the table, trying to pierce the reason of _why, why why why why why._

_

* * *

_

_"It's this hole I can see in each of his eyes,_

_where all the events that happen in this real world kind of just fall through,_

_It's loneliness, it's loneliness."_

_

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_

**Ugh. One thing I'm bad at? Dialogue. Along with maintaining characterization, it's one of my biggest challenges.**

**I figure that a country can survive even when its representative is killed, although it does cause some turbulence. So right now, the other nations are pretty much trying to keep America together even though Alfred is dead. So I suppose I kind of consider the characters and the actual countries as different entities who are not inexorably connected to each other. **

**Anyway, as I said this chapter marks a change in where the story is going. From now on Ivan's just going to be getting more and more insane and more and more delusional and in denial. England will also play more of a role later on, because I love him in a parental role (especially in angst fics). Also Alfred's body won't be getting molested every ten seconds, but that doesn't mean he wont be appearing in some way or another. *coughdreamsexcough***

**In addition, I tried to proofread this chapter better this this time around, but if there are any typos/grammar mistakes let me know, and I'll fix em up. **


	5. Medicating

**Double update! Aren't y'all happy? I figured I should, since this chapter's a little short and weird and all. Hints of self destructive behavior, growing alcoholism, and abuse of pain/psychotic medication to follow. Things aren't getting any happier for our poor Russian...**

******Ch 4: Medicating**  


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_"Doctor, Doctor, what am I here for?_

_Can't you see that I don't need this,_

_I don't need these walls."_

_

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_

_9 am. The day starts with the anti psychotics, a tripled dosage because he's a nation and because he's Russia and he's _incredibly fucking tall_, as Alfred always put it. They put him in a tranquilizing haze, and only in these early morning hours is he able to fend off not only thoughts of Alfred, but also the images of the man laughing amidst fields of sunflowers that has haunted his brain ever since Alfred had disappeared, ever since he had last held that body in his arms__—_

_12 pm. Noon is anti depressants, bottles labeled _Paxil _and _Traxadone_, words that make no sense and sound like gibberish, but he downs two little pills from each and grudgingly drinks a glass of water to ease the chalky things down his throat. He sits at the kitchen table and waits to take in the soothing aftereffects, because this is all he does since Alfred's disappearance, sits and takes the medication and thinks and he wonders how in the hell he survived before without Alfred, and how he's going to live now, now that Alfred is missing____—_

_4 pm. The initial buzz of the anti depressants wears off and Ivan turns instead to the trusty frosted bottle of vodka he had somehow kept hidden from Alfred in the back of the vegetable drawer, armed with the knowledge that while Alfred would roughly pillage the rest of the refrigerator, he would not dare touch those unless Ivan took the time to cook them and practically force them down the American's throat. Alfred had made Ivan promise to cut down on alcohol in return for trying to eat healthier, and had encouraged him to at least use a glass. Now, however, Ivan forfeits the glass and instead drinks straight from cold bottle, draining down half by the time he reaches the couch and collapses against the sagging fabric, leaning back against the cushions as he tips the rest of the bottle's contents down his throat. His arm droops over the side of the couch, the bottle hitting the floor with a thunk. _

_10 pm. Sleeping pills. He can't fathom why he had been given sleeping pills, why the others had cared about the Russian's nocturnal restlessness. Ivan doesn't take the sleeping pills and instead resigns himself to roaming the darkened house: up and down the stairs and winding through the kitchen, crunching the long dead and dried up sunflowers in the front hall into the carpet as he rests a hand on the doorknob, then turns back around and repeats the cycle, sitting down and then getting up from the saggy, leathery couch, avoiding only the room on the left on the upstairs landing with the door still yawning open____—_

_For six days Ivan follows the routine, dutifully taking the medication that is supposed to make him feel better, to make him forget about the fact that Alfred is gone, and that Ivan has yet to find him____—_

_On the seventh day, Ivan sleeps._

_

* * *

_

_"Doctor I can't thank you enough,_

_Doctor you won't regret this."_

_

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_

**Ominous ending is ominous. A lot of the major scenes from now on are going to be based in dreams/hallucinations, because I absolutely love writing dreams and using them as plot devices. **

**Next chapter is almost completely written, so I'm hoping I'll get it up tomorrow! In which Vanya has a particularly disturbing dream, and breaks down a little more...yay?**


	6. Relapsing

**Next chapter! I feel bad, I _meant_ to update on Saturday, but some site error was preventing people from updating/creating new fics. Blah. But, here it is, my longest chapter yet!**

**I gotta gloat for just a moment here because a few days ago I found out I get to go to italy for the summer! I'm even taking Italian next quarter, which is like the most insane coincidence ever. **

**Anyway, I really, really wanted to do this chapter justice, because the song that this chapter (and the next one) are based on are my absolute favorites in the album. I'm happy to finally write some more parental!England angst, cause it's really fucking sad. :(**

**Ch 5: Relapsing**

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_"So if death's the answer, then the question is the trigger,_

_And I'm just a firing pin._

_Yeah I'm just a messenger,_

_Doomed to detonate on delivery."_

_

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_

On the seventh day after Alfred's disappearance, Russia hears a knock on the door, just as he is laying down on the couch with a fresh bottle of vodka, already half drained. It is the only reason he ventures out of the house anymore, to stockpile his toxin of choice.

It takes a couple of attempt to push himself up from the empty nest he has made for himself in the couch but eventually he staggers to his feet, meandering over to the door and placing a hand on the wall in order to maintain the tentative balance.

With his free hand he unlocks the door and wrenches it open, letting it bang on the wall nearby, perhaps leaving a sizable dent. He winces and flutters his eyes at the sudden flash of sunlight, putting a hand up against the brightness and squinting to try to find the source of the knock.

Whoever it is stays quiet while his eyes adjust, and eventually he is able to make out the outline of the body in front of him.

_Ah._

"Angliya," Ivan says softly, "I would have imagined you have already gone home by now." He leans heavily against the doorframe, although he still is massive enough to block any of the Brit's view into the interior of the house.

England is fixedly staring at a point above Ivan's head as he addresses him.

"Of course not. N-not the way things are progressing. All of us have been meeting with Al___—_with America's boss and cabinet to see what we can do to tide all this over."

"Ah." Ivan muses, "So I see you are the others are still engaging in this bizarre charade, _da_?"

England folds his arms, left eye twitching in a traitorous tic.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Why are you here, _Angliya_? Alfred is not here."

England looks as if the air had been taken out of his breath, he chokes and splutters out a response.

"A-and why do you think that is, Russian?"

"Because you and the others are refusing to look for him. I am the only one who cares for him enough."

A noticeable flinch jolts in England' s body as he shifts his gaze lower, still pointedly avoiding looking into Ivan's eyes.

"You-how _dare_ you, you insane Russian___—_" As England takes a step forward, Russia reacts, grabbing the other side of the door frame with his bottle-free hand, effectively preempting any of England's attempts to enter the house.

"Are you going to try to force me out of Alfred's home, _Angliya_? I assure you, you would quite unable to."

It was true. _Angliya_ couldn't possibly keep the Russian out of Alfred's house. After all, only a few weeks ago Alfred had decided to place the home in both of their names. Considering _Angliya's_ state of mind, it was obvious he assumed this to be some grand conspiracy of Ivan's. Yes, to seize and _annex_ America's house, to make it all _become one with Russia____—_

"I don't care to take you out of his home, Russian. I only came to get Alfred's things."

Russia froze at that. Arthur want access into Alfred's house. Alfred and _Ivan's_ house. What's worse, he wanted to take what belonged to Alfred. _Yes, Angliya and the others desired to partition everything about America, from his country to his personal life____—_

"_Nyet._" He states simply, clenching a pale hand on the doorframe.

"You are not stepping foot inside this house."

"Like hell I'm not."

Russia cocks his head.

"_Angliya_, I am warning you, if you shall try to force your way inside, than I will have no choice but___—_"

"What?" England finally, _finally_ meets Russia's eyes, his own blazing and slightly wet with anger.

"Are you going to do the same thing to me? Throw me down and throttle me right here, you sick, sick___—_"

Ivan lashes out and catches England on the cheek with the back of his hand. Arthur stumbles backwards and puts a hand to his face, expression curled up in a savage snarl. Ivan returns it with a cold gaze. He could have hit him much, _much harder. He'd wanted to. _

Furious tears are now welling up freely in the Englishman's eyes. Throwing away all trappings of gentlemanliness in his pain, he spits at Ivan's feet.

"I want you dead. With every last piece of my strength I want you _dead_." He hisses between his teeth.

Ivan gives the Englishman a cool smile.

"Now stop, _Angliya_. Alfred would not like it."

Ivan likes the Englishman's reaction every time he mentions his name. He wants him to feel guilty for not caring about Alfred. For not caring as much as Ivan does.

Arthur's eyes leave Ivan's as he buries his face in his palm, pressing his fingers into his forehead and temple.

"You're insane."

Arthur is beginning to break, Ivan can see, but some feral part of him_ wants_ it, wants to see him hurt___—_

"_Nyet._ You are blind, _Angliya_. You are blind like others."

Silence follows. Ivan stares at Arthur's form, which has become even more hunched over, fingers pressed into his temple and his other hand clutching at his chest.

"Go, _Angliya_," Ivan's voice is hard and cold, "I no longer want your vile presence on my doorstep."

Arthur inhales sharply as he breath hitches, pulling his hand down from his face to stare up at Ivan, the whites of his eyes now reddened and watery against his blotchy skin.

"B-But, he___—_I want to see his___—_I want to see if he___—_"

He lurches forward and grabs Russia by the shoulders and almost sends Ivan off balance, though he doesn't show it in his impassive expression. Arthur grinds his teeth together against the pained tears welling up in his eyes, face flushed and irritated. He drops his head and tightly clutches the Russian's shoulders.

"Please, can't I just___—_can't I just see___—_I want to see if he kept something___—_"

It is shameful for such an old and proud nation to plead to another in such a manner, and Arthur seems to realize the pitiful nature of his begging but cannot bring himself to pull away from the Russian.

Ivan keeps his expression hard even as England rubs at his wet and reddened face. But perhaps___—_he trusts Angliya more than the other nations, if only by a fraction. He had been the only one to show Alfred care that even began to approach Ivan's own.

Silently, Ivan brings his hand down from the doorframe and lets it fall to his side, a mute response of acquiescence.

Arthur looks up, glancing from Ivan to the yawning space of the house's interior in front of him. The Englishman releases Russia's shoulders and takes a moment to put himself back together before brushing past Ivan and half stumbling into the house.

Ivan stays silent in the doorway until he hears the creak of the Englishman venturing up the stairs. It annoys him slightly that the Brit knows the house almost as well as he does.

Ivan closes the door, sealing the darkness of the house off from the exterior world. He turns and makes his way back over the couch, the vodka bottle a dead weight in his hand that pulls his massive form into the raggedy cushions.

He feels a hint of anxiety at _Angliya's_ invisible presence in the house. Perhaps Ivan should have followed him, and yet he knew it wasn't possible___—_he never had the strength or sobriety to make it up the stairs anymore.

It wouldn't matter. If _Angliya_ tried to take too many of Alfred's belonging out Ivan felt confident that he could stop him, beat him into submission and toss him out of his home. He tips the bottle back, feeling the dull burn slide down his throat and settle like a numbing weight in his stomach.

After _who knows how long he hates the thought of Angliya pillaging his darling's things _Ivan hears the soft creak signaling _Angliya's_ return downstairs_. _

Tilting his head slightly, he appraises the Englishman's appearance, which was somehow more pitiful than it was when he had been crying and shouting and breaking on the doorstep.

His head is bowed, eyes hidden through limp shocks of hair, looking down at something that he holds in his arms.

A soft blue blanket, ratty and dusted with age, lies draped over one of Englishman's arms, his fingers lightly stroking the handstitched hem, touching the lovingly embroidered stars and bunnies pictured in white. He absentmindedly rubs the ancient fabric between two fingers, gentle and deathly afraid that any harsh motion would disintegrate it into dust. In that moment, England looks desperately lonely, and smaller than usual as he holds the little scrap of the past as tightly as if it were his only lifeline, as if it were a sleeping child in his arms.

He doesn't look at Ivan, and the Russian, even through the haze of vodka and pills, can see that he is barely suppressing the urge to either beat him within an inch of his or completely break down and sob.

Arthur finally looks up, clearing his throat as if about to say something to Ivan. He stands there awkwardly for a moment, mouth slightly open, before turning away and walking out of his sight into the entrance hall. Moments later Ivan hears the quiet click of the door opening and closing. Ivan is left alone again, drunk and drugged and destitute in the desolate home.

On the seventh night Ivan finally decides to take the sleeping pills. The earlier incident with _Angliya_ has left him drained, and even the combination of pills and vodka cannot clear the images of Alfred grinning in the sea of sunflowers from his mind.

After easing the dry pills down his throat with a shot of _water, for once_ he lies back on the couch, his legs settled on the arm, as it had always been too small for him to lie upon comfortably. It had been much better suited for a tinier body, that always cuddled the soft throw pillows in his sleep like a dreaming child.

_The same small body that stood out like a beacon even amidst vibrant sunflower fields____—_

Ivan closes his eyes and prays that he can fall into a dreamless rest.

* * *

_He rustles and squirms in his sleep. Before he wakes he can tell something is not right, he can feel the body in the bed next to him begin to twist and thrash around. A violent elbow jabs him in the ribs and suddenly he jolts awake, suddenly hyper aware of everything around him. He props himself up on his elbows and looks about to see the large body in the bed next to him struggling against unseen foes, face screwed up and twitching. Anxiety stings at his chest as he puts a hand on the trembling shoulder, shaking him and whispering quiet assurance. And yet, the larger man does not break into wakefulness, his twitching arms now put up in front of his face as if to shield himself from an invisible assailant. Suddenly more panicky, he puts one hand on the bed and rises to his knees, bending over the other and squinting at his face against the blur of his eyesight. He cries out to him, hands on his shoulders, scared and trying to wake the dreaming man from his nightmare. The sheets are entangled about his lower body as he wrestles with the man's arms and tries to calm the awful shuddering surging in his body. _

_He is scared beyond belief when the other man doesn't wake up; all he wants is to see those gorgeous eyes open, the eyes that never fail to make him feel loved and safe____—_

_He smoothes a hand over the thick bangs of hair and desperately whispers, calming his own voice and trying to guide his lover out of his terror. _

_He sees a slight glimmer under the lids and almost laughs in relief, the safe feeling washing over him once more._

_But any sound he might have made is cut off by a hand that reaches up and seizes his throat. _

_His world flips and he finds himself pressed into the mattress, pinned down by the hard and heavy body above him, constricted by the crushing strength of both hands on his throat. He sharply inhales, but his breath begins to burn as the other's hands tighten around his windpipe. Suddenly realizing what is happening, he grabs at the hands around his throat and desperately tries to pry them away, trying to kick his legs out from underneath the other's body. He pulls the hands away slightly, just enough to choke out a desperate plea. _

_"What are____—_Va___—_stop___—_" 

_He looks up to the other's eyes, searching for the familiar comfort and safety they always held for him, only to see a look he had never seen before, glowing dulled with a determined hate. He feels terror rise up in him as his eyes well up with fearful tears. He thrashes around under the other's weight and gasps as the other again tightens his grip and begins to shake his neck, throttling the life out of him. _

_"No____—_no___—_" he breathlessly chokes, his ability to take in air decreasing with every passing second. 

_He feels a buzzing in his head, numb, as if his skull was stifled and stuffed with cotton, fuzzing his senses____—_

_"Stop____—_please___—_"

_With a last vestige of strength his bucks upwards and to the side, rolling the two of them off the bed, tangling further into the sheets. The other keeps his viselike hold on him as they roll onto the floor, but he finds himself on top of the other. He tries to get the upper hand, sitting on the other's hips, but with a surge of fear he feels his vision summersault again as the other slams him hard against the floor, striking his head against the wall and bending his neck at a painful angle. He wants to scream, cry out and beg the other to stop but he can't find his voice anymore____—_

_He desperately mewls out the other name, tears pouring out of his reddened eyes as his weak grip on the wrists begs the other to stop, to wake up please please wake up and stop this stop and just hold me close and kiss me stop please it hurts it hurts it hurts____—_

_He can't breath he can't fucking breath and the other's presence and power is so completely overwhelming____—_

_This can't be him, can't be him because he wouldn't do this, he loves him, all the times he's protected him and taken care of him and he's always felt so safe in the other's arms with those roughly callused hands tracing over him so lovingly____—_he loves him so why, why why why why why___—_?

_His hands grow numb and he barely feels his arms fall away from the other's forearms and flop lifelessly to the ground. He stops kicking and thrashing and struggling, his limbs useless without the life of air. _

_Even still the other shakes him mercilessly, his head pounding into the hardwood floor. _

_With his last wisp of breath he whines out the other's name one more time before his body goes completely numb; __the wet tracks of his dying tears on his face _the only thing he can feel as his vision fades away into the other's deranged purple eyes. 

Ivan jolts out of his sleep when he feels his head hit something sharp. His hand flies to his head even as his back hits the hard floor, pulling him into full wakefulness.

His heart is hammering against his chest, and there's sweat, _sweat_ on his face and hands. The strange heat of fear is blooming in his chest as his hands instinctually reach up to touch his neck, the lingering horror of the dream still settled in his body.

He lays on the floor for a moment. His breathing is hoarse, flaying his throat as it grates in and out.

Ivan hasn't cried. He hasn't cried in months, not since the tears of relief when the tiny object of his affection smiled at his confession and returned his feelings with calming kisses. But now, lying on the cold floor, limbs thrown haphazardly about and mind still reeling from a dream _only a dream only a dream but it felt too real_ he feels himself begin to break down into shaken tremors that evolve into sobs and tears and eventually throaty wails. Never before has he felt so utterly hurt, so deeply, _deeply_ wounded.

He grabs at his head and fists silver hair in his hands as he curls up and cries until his face is raw and his eyes are so blurry with tears that he can see nothing except Alfred's tender face kissed with sunflowers and even then he is swallowed up with the memory of the dark and twisted purple of his own eyes. Ivan covers his face and digs his nails into his eyelids.

_Where is he where is he where is he?_

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_

_"But if this pain can be arranged_

_In such a way to bring out beauty then_

_Well, who am I to stop it?_

_I'll bring him back and I won't stop until it's done,_

_Until this nightmare's undone,_

_I need him."_

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**Okay, even I'll admit_____—_this chapter is **_**sad**_**. I mean, we have depressing parental England angst, dying America angst, and traumatized Russia angst. That's a triple whammy. I think I may have teared a little while writing England, cause I love the kind of father/son dynamic they have, especially with England's attachment to America as a child. **

**I have the majority of the rest of this story already mapped out/partially written, and right now it's looking like it'll be about ten chapters. And possibly an additional epilogue, if people want it. **

**Thanks, and please read&review!**


	7. Composing

**You lucky peeps get a quick update, cause the error message is preventing me from uploading any of the five or so oneshots I have done…so yeah! I'm updating this again! Even if this chappie is a little short. **

**To the anon who's upset about what I do to America___—_I actually do that **_**a lot, lol. **_**In like half of my stories America gets killed/wounded/crippled/otherwise damaged in some way. P: I dunno why, I suppose I just like to break the cutie. **

**Shit goes down in this chapter. I kinda feel like this story is just escalating: whenever you think things are bad, they **_**just get worse**_**. **

**I get the feeling this chapter is a little confusing…I hope it fits in with the rest of the story and that Ivan ain't too OCC :C**

**There's some disturbing content in this one___—_descriptions of dream violence and torture, and lots of murder! Fun times.**

**.**

**Ch 6: Composing**

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_"So come over to my house, catch up over dinner,_

_We're having strychnine and sirloin, port wine and paint thinner."_

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Weeks have passed and still Ivan is alone.

Alfred continues to haunt his dreaming hours, but Ivan no longer has the willpower to stop taking the sleeping pills. So every night, Ivan lies down to sleep to images of _Alfred pale and stiff and unmoving, Alfred, still with his neck crooked and broken, Alfred bound and gagged and crying, his stomach cut open and his insides spilling out, Alfred twitching, his eyes rolling into his head and his mouth frothing like a deranged animal, Alfred____—_God___—__Alfred, split and gutted like a fish from chest to hip, Alfred with his left breast cut open and his heart pulled out, still attached by the veins and clutched by a pale, wet hand, Alfred bleeding from deep stabbing wounds in his back, Alfred with his blue eyes missing, his limbs missing; haunting, bloody images of his lover in unimaginable pain and always screaming, always screaming for Ivan to save him, even when his tongue is cut open and he's choking on his own blood____—_

And every night Ivan wakes up screaming himself, face already awash with tears as he tries to drown out Alfred's cries with his own, and he wishes so badly that Alfred would come back and help to chase away the awful nightmares with his warmth___—_

And one night as Ivan lays shivering on the floor, the latest images of his lover scalped with streams of red instead of tresses of gold still swarming in his head, he comes to a realization.

Perhaps these___—_dreams, the terrifying nightmares___—_perhaps these are warnings. Warnings from Alfred, from wherever he is, warnings about the state of his country, what the other nations and even his own shell shocked government are doing to him, making a painful mockery of the man while he is away.

Occasionally to pass the time Ivan had turned on the television, only to see the images on the American news station of the country trying to rebuild, cities recovering from riots, reconstructing buildings razed to the ground___—_and finally videos of government officials and bureaucrats and cabinet members talking about _recovering_, talking about _keeping America stable and upright and still a beacon to the world and still a superpower_ but Alfred is not present at any of the press conferences, wedged inconspicuously in the corner as per usual. Alfred is _not here_, and all that his people and his new boss care about is propping up the _sham_, the ramshackle government whose heart and soul have disappeared.

Alfred was punishing Ivan with these dreams for allowing this facade to continue, from wherever he was, haunting him like this___—_if Ivan only were to _fix _this, fix the cowards who would do this to America in his absence___—_then perhaps Alfred would come back to him, and stop taunting him with his sunflower hair just barely out of reach.

_Ivan will fix it. Ivan will make it better. And then Alfred will come back and make Ivan better. _

After weeks without Alfred Ivan goes outside their house, feeling the kiss of waning Virginian winter air, plots and plans swirling in his head, hand gripping tightly onto a lead pipe hidden in the folds of his coat. Tonight, Ivan forfeits his run to the local liquor store; denies himself the comforting and numbing bliss of the vodka. Tonight he is completely lucid, entirely focused on what he has determined to do, what he _must do for Alfred's sake_. America's capitol is not far off from their home, with his long strides and measured gait Ivan would make it there is no time.

In these nights when Ivan is away from their home he stalks and shadows America's capitol with natural inconspicuousness sharpened through the paranoia of the Cold War, watching all the important busy government types, tracking their movements, their means of transportation, what routes they take home, where they live___—_

Some are senators, some congressmen, some members of the broken cabinet, some bureaucrats and committee chairmen, some temps and assistants and interns___—_

Some he cuts them off on their way home, as they pass darkened alleyways, or as they walk alone on subway staircases. Some he finds on their porch, key halfway into the lock, some he snatches from public restrooms, from restaurants, from bus stops___—_

Some he beats over the head with his pipe. Sometimes he breaks into houses and laces their food, sometimes he creeps into darkened bedrooms and chokes them in their sleep. Sometimes he leaves the bodies where they fall, blood-soaked and broken, as a message; sometimes he picks them up, tosses them into the Chesapeake or brings them on his back through the shadows and buries them in the foundations of new buildings, places where they will never be found. He takes rare pride in his skills, honed through years of doing "favors" for the Братва back in his home country.

It is not always such a covert and surreptitious affair, however. Ivan finds that some of the newer, more eager to please congressmen can be lured in easier.

Ivan can appear as a wealthy lobbyist, inviting impressionable young men into his home with promises of money and support. With the disarray of Alfred's country, any instance to secure oneself in Washington is immediately set upon with fervor. Alfred's stately home, which Ivan had _finally _taken the time to put together___—__at least the downstairs, Ivan wouldn't set foot on the second floor____—_provides an appropriate backdrop to the charade, and he had been good, _so good_, that no one suspects a thing.

He insists upon preparing their meals, laughing off their surprise and counting it up to good natured Russian charm; his quaint foreign mannerisms. He talks to them, anecdotes and stories from his country, playing the perfect role as he prepares it. Ivan has become so skilled in this that it hardy takes a moment's thought to measure the adequate seasonings to the correct dosage.

It seems to take only a moment for the traitors and cowards to become cold at his table, eyes open, spilling glasses of red wine all over his tablecloth with askew, limp hands. Ivan drags the smartly dressed bodies from their slumped positions and pulls them across the waxed floor of their house with ease, as if lugging bags of trash___—_

These he simply stows away in the backyard, under the the bushes of roses and columbines and chamomiles that provide pleasant scent to such a filthy but _necessary_ act___—_

He has to remind himself that _it's for Alfred, it's for Alfred, it's so he can see Alfred again and Alfred won't hurt and Ivan won't hurt____—_

Still as he lies down on the bare couch at night after the deeds are done all he can see is Alfred _hurting_, always hurting and in pain and it _hurts_ it hurts the Russian so terribly, only bolstering his resolve to cleanse, to strip away all the cancerous cowards latched onto America___—_

One night there is only a single monster, a young, impressionable representative, willing to further wedge his foot in the door of the _new America, as they called it____—_"rebuilding" America, building the farce___—_drawn in carefully by Ivan with promise of financial backing and support in exchange for simple votes on key issues, easy, vapid promises that the Russian can make as a means to his end.

Sooner than usual the meal is finished and Ivan drags the limp body from where it had collapsed against the table, but for some reason this one is harder, the corpse is heavier and weighs him down as he pulls it out of their home___—_

It doesn't help that the young congressmen is blonde and stares at him through wide, petechial blue eyes. Ivan averts his gaze from the body until its pale skin is covered in dirt, open eyes hidden under the earth.

Still Ivan works and works, night after night, carefully calculated his assaults, testing out different methods, avoiding patterns, striking and taking until the traitorous numbers have dwindled, until there's only a handful of horrors left___—_

And yet they continue in their hateful display, propping up the name of America as if the boy itself were a nameless corpse, simply a front for their cruel corporate and political games. Ivan will put a stop to that. He will put a stop to Alfred's pain.

* * *

_"My heart breaks every time I dismember the flesh _

_Hide the evidence and start again because_

_It's all about the song in my head,_

_The one where the audience is all dead."_

_

* * *

_

**Братва: "Bratva," the Russian mafia. My headcanon has Ivan having mob connections…it just makes sense, right?**

**If you can't tell, things are going to get...gorier from here on. Not too much, but still.**

**Also I suddenly want to write lobbyist!Ivan and congressman!Alfred…would be fun. Finally, everything I learned in AP government would have a practical use…**

**Oh and I made a mistake last chapter, when I said there would be ten chapters total...I keep forgetting that I split up the third chapter, so yeah, instead of ten chapters there's going to be eleven. So yay! Four more chapters of torturing poor Vanya and Al.**

**Read& review por favor!**


	8. Purging

**So it's officially been about a month since I've started this story..haha, this is the longest fanfiction I've ever written! After I finish this, I feel like I'll be writing happy/fluffy things for a long time...**

**Haa. It's so tempting to give this story a happier ending. ;) But I'm going to stick to my guns. Angst and tragedy for all!**

**Short chapter, hopeful that's alright. The last three are really really long though, so I hope that makes up for it. **

**Brief gore near the end of this, nothing too bad though.**

**.**

**Ch 7: Purging**

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* * *

**

_"Here lies clarity in a perfect grave comprised of perfect steel,_

_The perfect blade glows a perfect white against the perfect lines from this perfect night._

_I'm the perfect picture of complacency, and that's all I feel."_

_

* * *

_

_Life has become very cyclical_, Ivan muses. Not a month ago he had been in the very same position___—__the very same chair____—_he thinks, as he pulls his hands against the cuffs binding him.

He had been caught, caught protecting America. But it had not been in vain, the hateful man who the other nations had put into place when Alfred's boss had stepped down, _that man____—_that man had felt Ivan's hands on his neck from behind and had felt a sharp twist and had then felt nothing more.

He supposed that he had been "caught." Not that he had tried to escape when he had been discovered. When England _England, of course, it always had to be England _ and his boss had entered into the cowards's office Ivan had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking up blankly with the traitor's body slumped on the desk behind him. That's all it had been and now he sits before a kangaroo court of nations who once again have his fate in their hands.

"He's destroyed any and all hope we had of rebuilding America."

England's voice is devoid of any emotion, which is both strange and vaguely terrifying. No anger at all, no sadness in that stern, factual tone. He is too far gone.

"Look at him. He's not at all remorseful."

"_Angleterre_, you must not, you know that he is sick-"

"Does it matter?" England cuts the Frenchman off, "It doesn't matter _why_ he did it now. Next time it could be you, frog. It could be any one of us. It could be your president, your prime minister. We don't have a choice."

"I concur," comes a voice from within the ranks of nations. Murmurs of assent ring through the room.

The vote is held, the die is cast. Ivan watches as the countries decided his fate, all voting together so they won't be seen identifying with the madman, the madman who _was right____—_

"It's settled then. He will be stripped of his representation. He will be dissolved."

The verdict. Ivan can't bring himself to be surprised. The death sentence now weighed upon him feels as light as a feather. He looks up to England, who's staring down at him, and gives him a wry smile.

"You need my consent still, yes? Unless you are considering to invade, which I would suggest would not be wise."

"I'm sure, with our combined efforts___—_"

"_Nyet._ It is not necessary. I will agree." Ivan interrupted them, causing the warring eyes to shift to him. Ivan stared back, sensing the surprise at his willingness. Willingness to die, to sacrifice himself.

But Ivan was not stupid, nor was he selfish. His country could not suffer for what Ivan Braginski had martyred himself for. Besides, he no longer felt a desire to be the Russian Federation. Once Alfred had ceased to be the United States of America, and the cowards had taken over, he had lost his own passion as a country.

"You will be letting me go home now, yes?"

"If home means back to bloody Siberia where we don't have to sit and watch you rot, then yes."

Ivan wriggles in the handcuffs. They were pathetic, really. Ivan truly had no desire to fight against them, but the nations didn't know that, did they? They still assumed him to be a murderous, ravaging _monster_.

"These restraints are very weak, you know. It would not be much problem to simply snap them."

_He had done what needed to be done. He had killed the cowards who had been hurting Alfred and keeping him away from Ivan. If the nations wanted him gone, then so be it. He was willing to sacrifice his own life for America's._

"I will agree to it. I only have one small request."

England forces a humorless laugh out, frowning grimly at the bound Russian.

"What? Do you think you're in a position to be making demands? After the thing's that you've done?"

Ivan clenches his hands against his restraints, causing an audible creak that makes England and the other nations freeze.

"You will allow me this one request, _da?"_

"No."

Ivan smiles wider at Arthur, letting out a low, humoring laugh, bordering on hysterical.

"You are so strange, _Angliya_."

Arthur grits his teeth.

"Get him out of here."

Ivan gives a sudden twist in his chair, the wood groaning under the weight and movement. Ivan doesn't miss the flicker of fear that runs through Arthur's eyes.

"Allow me to remain in _Amerika's_ house. You may place me under house arrest, you may forbid me from leaving, I do not mind."

England says not a word, but betrays some of his inner turmoil by biting at his lips. Wordlessly, he slides a blank document across the table to Ivan. Ivan cocks his head as he stares at it, hardly reading the printed words. He knew what it entailed anyway.

He lets out a shallow sigh and looks up at England.

"I must have my hands free to sign such a thing. Please, release the restraints."

England stares hard at Ivan for a few moments, until the Frenchman next to him whispers to him and he finally relents. He motions Sweden over, the intimidating Nordic producing a small key from his pocket.

Sweden grabs roughly at Ivan's restraints and with a quiet click unlocks them. The nations around them visibly start as the cuffs fall away with a _clack_, anticipating the Russian to rise up and set about the conference with bloodied fists and bared teeth.

But Ivan doesn't struggle, lash out, or try to flee. He simply sits in his chair, rubbing his sore arms and even sending Sweden a thankful expression. There is no murderous glint in those thin purple eyes as he simply takes a proffered pen from England and leans forward, making to sign the document.

Ivan presses the tip of the pen to the paper, pausing for a moment.

_They weren't going to let Ivan stay in Alfred's house. They would not let him unless he proved____—_unless he proved to them that he would no longer harm anyone, that he wouldn't dream of hurting anything again, now that he had protected Alfred___—_

_Hands____—_if he could show them that his hands could no longer do any harm___—_

Before anybody could react or stop him Ivan draws up the pen and brings it down with piercing force. Sudden shrieks come from some of the surrounding nations as red blood dribbles down onto the unsigned document.

Ivan ignores the spasming pain in his wrist as he clenches his hand and turns, digging the pen in further, until he feels the tip poke out through to the other side. Blood drips in thick splatters onto the paper and table.

He holds up the arm, and some of the more squeamish countries gasp as the pen is seen protruding out the other side of his wrist. With an equally unpleasant squelch Ivan wrenches the pen from his arm and quickly scribbles his mark onto the document, liberally coated in blood.

He turns to the shocked face of the Brit next to him, and hands him back his pen, covered in blood, tip broken.

The pain doesn't register in Ivan's face, instead there is simply that steady, unbalanced smile that draws a shiver from deep within England's body.

"I doubt very much that I will be able to do harm like this, _Angliya_."

* * *

_"Slow motion replaces real time,_

_As the horror fills their eyes,_

_These claws will never kill again."_

_

* * *

_

**Sweden cameo! I always consider him to be the only one able to intimidate Russia in the slightest…**

**We're into the final stretch here, folks. Ivan has essentially been sentenced to die by the rest of the nations, so he's like, not the Russian Federation anymore. So I figured that his age/lack of semi immortality is going to start to catch up to him…**

**Next chapter will have some Ivan/Alfred interaction (finally!) and a helluva lot of heartbreak. As well as the smut I promised. Oh boy...**


	9. Disintegrating

**You guys get an extra long chapter this time around! Also, my long promised dreamsex makes an appearance! This one took my longer, naturally, because I started up college again this week. But I was able to put out three chapters over spring break, which is pretty damn good.**

**Alfred! You have no idea how much I missed writing for him in this story. Even in such a bad situation I feel warm fuzzies when he appears. **

**This chapter is a lil different. Most of it occurs in a dream. And, *relatively* it's not as depressing. It's even a little cute at times.**

**There's some sex, but it's not too explicit, I guess. **

**And I finally got to write sex in a sunflower field, which I've been wanting to do for fucking **_**ever**_**. **

.

**Ch 8: Disintegrating**

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* * *

**

_"Last night I leapt through the ceiling._

_There was just something appealing about leaving my body behind_

_And coming through as you circled overheard."_

_

* * *

_

Ivan sits on the couch. He has not gotten up for days, not since he had been escorted to Alfred's house, hands secured behind his back, painfully cool against the still bleeding wound in his wrist.

He'd left the wound on his arm exposed to the air. It does not matter. He is no longer his country's representative. He no longer has the regenerative and resilient power of a nation. If he is to be waiting for death, then there is no point in bandaging up the wound, which has already begun to turn bright red, veins around it darkening to an almost purplish tint. Ivan assumes that it must've started hurting at one point.

For the night, Ivan forfeits the sleeping pills. For the first time in months he doesn't feel as if he needs them.

He can feeling something within him cracking, something breaking, he is teetering on the brink between this world and the next, of the world he composed for himself and the truth___—_

He lays himself down in the nest of the couch, feet propped up on the arm, forearms folded behind his head, wrist wound pulsing under the weight.

Ivan finds himself looking at the ceiling, unaware of when he slips into dreams, until he sees a glimmer of gold swim through the stark plaster before disappearing.

_Gold____—_Ivan's little golden rabbit, disappeared down the rabbit's hole___—_

His eyes flutter shut and he follows the glimmer upward through the ceiling.

* * *

Suddenly Ivan is bathed in light, the light of summery days, unlike the recent dreams of dark deathly rooms or the cloudy fogs from which he occasionally had found himself observing his darling boy.

Earthly scents touch his nose, something soft kissing at his arms and face and fluttering against his hair. When his sight fades in all he can see is gold.

_Ah._

Sunflowers, naturally. Great fields of the molten flowers, as far as his eyes can see. A sight that had often frequented his dreams before. He turns in a full circle, arms out to touch the gentle flowers, indulging in the dreaming peace of the moment.

Suddenly, Ivan sees movement amidst the still golden heads of the sunflowers. A tanned back, rippled in muscles, wafting blonde hair that almost blended in with the sunflower's yellow petals___—_

_I've found you. _

"Ah___—_" Ivan's voice catches his throat. _It is dream, wonderful dream, but____—_

"___—_little one." His voice is quieter than he intended it to be, a mere whisper, almost to himself, but in dreams things work out in strange means, so in that mysterious way his voice carries to Alfred and he hears him, and he turns___—_

And _Oh God oh God _Ivan's chest constricts because he can see his sunflower's face, devoid of any pain, glowing with life, that boy-like expression of surprise registering in his freckled face before it splits into a wide, white smile that in turn parts in a barely audible giggle___—_

He greets Ivan with an exuberant wave, and all Ivan can manage to do in return is gesture back with a shaky pale hand.

And then Alfred is bounding towards him through the flowers, laughing, perfect blue eyes alight with childish glee___—_

He's everything that Ivan remembered and more: all suntanned skin and blonde hair, lean, not overly muscular body, bright eyes and beautiful smile___—_

And the marks. The purpling marks around his neck, marring that beautiful tanned flesh___—_

Ivan takes a step back.

Alfred halts in his tracks at the look on the Russian's face, his own expression dropping sadly.

"What is it?"

Oh God___—_oh God _Alfred's voice_, like absolute honey, ecstatic and vibrant in his ears, Ivan hasn't heard that nectar tone in _so very long____—_

"Alfred," Ivan sighs out his name, a long, drawn out breath as he just stares at him.

"Cолнышко._"_

_His little sun. _

Alfred stays in place, that little, questioning smile on his face, as Ivan takes slow, tentative steps towards him, terrified that any moment the dreamscape will shatter, the images of Alfred bursting into the black of a house that seems _dead_ so dead compare to this___—_

Once he's close enough, so near that he can feel the flicker of Alfred's breath, his wonderful, warm breath, Ivan's own breath begins to hurt, his chest constraining his bursting heart and lungs.

Alfred gives him another smile, more subdued, more restrained, but equally as loving.

"Hi Vanya."

Alfred's voice hums in his ear as the vibrant American takes Ivan's large hand in his, and Ivan feels his heart melt at the touch as Alfred smiles and draws patterns into the skin of Ivan's knuckles.

He presses his forehead against Alfred's, who's eyes begin to slide shut.

"_Nyet_, little one. Keep your eyes open, please." Alfred complies, and they lock gazes, Ivan getting lost in those familiar, dreamy pools.

Alfred reaches up and puts his arms around Ivan's neck, with his own dropping down to circle the American's waist, the mere sliver of space still between them.

"Alfred," He rubs a circle into the American's lower back, sighing again. An overwhelming sadness settles deep with in his chest, stifling his heart.

"You do not know___—_how long, how long I have been without you___—_"

_How much I have given up for you____—_

"Where have you been, my sunflower?"

Alfred rubs his forehead against Ivan's and shoots him a soft, sympathetic smile.

"That don't matter, right? 'Cause I'm here now, big guy."

Ivan shivers as he feels Alfred's fingers touch the back of his neck as he plays with the short grey blonde strands and his eyes are drawn like magnets to his sunflower's neck, because _those are real, those are there and they are evidence of something horrible____—_

"Alfred," Ivan starts, removing his hands from Alfred's waist and coming to rest on the tanned forearms about his shoulder. And Alfred looks at him with eyes that are so _alive, it is not possible, Alfred cannot possibly be____—_

"You___—_you are not dead, are you?"

Alfred looks at him blankly, before letting a slight laugh leave his lips.

"You're so weird, Vanya."

"_Alfred._"

The American stiffens, and pull away his arms at Ivan's tone. He chuckles softly and looks down, hands now on Ivan's chest, unsure of whether to push him away or pull him into another hug.

Ivan reaches one hand up to cup Alfred's head, feeling the touch of the blonde locks.

"I want___—_I want to kiss you, sunflower___—_"

Alfred cocks his head to the side, questioning.

"No one's stopping you, big guy."

Ivan shakes his head, his breath weak, shuddering.

"But I can't. I _can't,_ sunflower."

Alfred leans forward and puts his head into Ivan's shoulder, sighing.

"Why not?"

When Ivan speaks again, he sounds almost hysterical.

"Because you are gone. Because you are gone and it is all my fault. It is my fault."

Ivan swallows, then tries to breach that most terrifying question once again.

"Please___—_" God, he is broken, _broken broken broken Alfred is breaking him-_

_"_My sunflower, tell me___—_"

_The words are terrifying, absolutely terrifying, they hurt coming out of Ivan's throat____—_

"Are you dead?"

Alfred pulls back from where he had been nuzzling Ivan's shoulder, and lets his hands rub up and down the Russian's chest. He bows his head and sighs___—_a pained, weak little sigh.

"I'm sorry." He says quietly.

And in that moment, this dreamscape is worse than any of the nightmares Ivan had had before. Ivan closes his eyes and tilts his head back, barely, _just _barely restraining himself from screaming out.

"I'm sorry."

"_Nyet_." Ivan shakes his head and runs his hands up Alfred's forearms. "_Nyet_, little one. I forbid you from saying this."

Alfred's answer had brought up new terror within Ivan, new horror because _no, no it wasn't possible, he couldn't have, it was a dream, dream Alfred was lying somehow__-_

"It_____—_it was_____—_did I_____—_"

The sudden solemnity in Alfred's eyes answers any of Ivan's remaining questions. And somethings _tears_ inside of him.

His knees buckle suddenly and Alfred yelps and grabs onto his tightly, holding them both up until Ivan finally regains feeling back in his legs.

The memory of what he had done is still a fog, but he had done something, he was guilty of something that had made Alfred go away_____—_he had caused him pain.

"Did I_____—_" Ivan swallows shakily "Did I hurt you, sunflower?"

Alfred reflexively touches the purple marks on his throat. Ivan makes an absolutely _miserable_ noise.

"Well, I mean, I'm not going to say that it was at all a pleasant experience_____—_"

Ivan's breath hurts as Alfred speaks, speaks from _a voice that had been silenced, no, no, Ivan couldn't have, couldn't have _murdered_ that nectar tone______—_

"I am sorry. I am so very, very sorry."

He takes Alfred into his arms again, not caring about dreams and realities because the warm body in his arms is as real as anything else he's chosen to believe in.

Alfred stills for a moment, quiet, saying nothing as he breathes out into Ivan's chest. Then he slowly returns the hug, albeit more tentatively than Ivan.

"I was scared Vanya. I was so scared. I didn't know what was happening, I didn't know why you would want to do that and that was worse than any of the pain_____—_"

"I am so sorry. So sorry, so sorry, so sorry, _so sorry._" Ivan's body begins to tremble, and he curses the weakness in his arms, brought on by sadness, because it means he cannot hold Alfred as tightly_____—_

He sniffs audibly, eyes stinging. Alfred looks up at the noise, worming his arms up in Ivan's tight embrace to touch the scarfless skin of his neck.

"Oh God, please, Vanya, d-dude, please don't cry_____—_"

"How can I not cry, my darling, my _beautiful_ sunflower_____—_" His kisses Alfred on the hair, the forehead, the cheekbones, the nose, any piece of visible skin that he can, except for the lips, he hasn't earned it back yet, he hasn't earned the right to do that to Alfred yet_____—_

He runs his hands almost restlessly through Alfred's hair as his breath hitches, tears now openly coursing out of his eyes as the field of sunflowers becomes his hell, becomes the evidence of his guilt_____—_

"I was coward. I ran away, little one. I ran away when I saw what I had done to you."

His kisses the top of Alfred's trembling head, remaining there to smell and speak into America's hair.

"You are a dream. I-I do not want you to be a dream. You _cannot _be." He states simply.

Alfred looks up at him sadly, then, without making a sound, takes Ivan's head in his hands and brings it down, lightly kisses him below the eyes, soft lips taking up the salty water of the Russian's tears. Ivan shivers, America's lips seem so utterly real and warm, a warmth that he has missed deeply, whose absence has hurt him more than any and all of the wars, assassinations and invasions combined.

When Alfred is done he buries his head again in Ivan's chest and hugs him tightly. Ivan is still shuddering, breath still uneven, wondering why his darling was trying to comfort him, despite everything that he had done_____—_

"I want you to forgive me. I know you cannot, you _cannot_ but I_____—_"

Alfred tightens his grip on Ivan.

"Who says I can't? I fo_____—_"

"_No_." Ivan interrupts him, voice full of self hate. Alfred looks surprised for a moment, before he molds into a painfully sad expression that breaks Ivan's heart. Forcing a crooked smile Ivan placing one long, pale finger to Alfred's quivering pink lips.

"It is not you, sunflower. It is just_____—_I do not deserve that."

But Ivan still craves his sunflower's warmth, so he leans in, leaving only a small amount of space between Alfred's face and his own.

"I want to kiss you," he whispers against Alfred's lips, "I want to_____—_I want to do so much for you_____—_"

He presses their lips together, and everything is familiar, everything is perfect in that one moment, as Alfred is warm and willing and undoubtedly there and perfect, he is perfect, except for the marks on his neck that will surely fade with time, with all the time that they will have together_____—_

_He will make it up to Alfred, he will make up everything to Alfred. _

Ivan's kiss becomes hotter as he delves deeper, the American opening his mouth willingly and ignoring the sensation that dulls his pleasure like a wet towel placed over his skin.

But Ivan _needs_ him, needs to feel that warmth again, so he begins to lower himself and Alfred, cupping a hand on his back to cradle his body as they both go down.

Soon Ivan's laid the other back down on the flat, overturned dirt beneath the sunflowers, both bathing in their shade and warmth.

The sunshine through the yellow petals seems to make Alfred's skin glow, his eyes sparkle, his hair shine,and for a moment Ivan is struck numb by the absolute beauty and perfection of his little one.

Alfred puts his hands on Ivan's shoulders and smirks that quirky white smile, encouraging Ivan to touch, to let his fingers roam the suntanned terrain of Alfred's body. And Ivan complies willingly, muscle memory instantly tracing the familiar paths, the toned arms and chest, slipping over the slightly softened belly and tracing his hipbones, before dipping underneath his waistband and squeezing his hips.

Ivan pulls the tattered blue jeans down to his lover's ankles, inhaling at the bright and brilliantly bare body beneath him. He leans down and kisses Alfred's stomach, rubbing his thigh before removing his own clothing.

Ivan is exceedingly gentle, almost paranoid in his movements, afraid that one harsh touch could turn the sweet, loving, beautiful Alfred into the screaming, bleeding Alfred with his perfect body cut open from his previous dreams_____—_

But it doesn't happen, Alfred is perfect, how Ivan remembers him, save for the dark marks over his neck which Ivan kisses with quivering lips, urging them to flee the tanned plains of Alfred's skin_____—_

Alfred wraps his arms around Ivan's neck as he nurses the space under the American's jaw with his mouth, whimpering at the barest touch of tongue and teeth.

Alfred is perfect, absolutely perfect as he lies before him, framed in the fertilized dirt of the sunflowers, bangs clinging to his sweaty forehead, eyes dulled with want, want for _Ivan______—_

"V-Vanya_____—_" He hears Alfred gasp, tightening his grip around the Russian's shoulders as his fingers skim the top of his dick, flicking the top of the head, shuddering at the feeling of the sensitive, vulnerable skin.

Ivan tilts his head, taking in Alfred's pleasure-flushed body as he spreads his thighs, stroking the tensed muscles there. He lifts the others tan legs until they rest on his shoulders, tightly holding onto Alfred's hips as he levers him up.

Alfred sits up slightly and Ivan leans down, meeting each other halfway in a slow, reverent kiss, Alfred's shaking fingers touching the sides of Ivan's face. There's no use for teeth, none of the usual battle for dominance between their tongues, it is smooth and equal, Alfred's mouth is yielding but not submissive, Ivan's almost guiding him, aiding the other along, the way it should be, romantic and sensual and _perfect______—_

Ivan slicks his own fingers in his mouth and sets about to prepare Alfred because _even if it is a dream even if it's not real it's still Alfred and he still does not want Alfred to hurt______—_

He leans in and kisses up and down Alfred's neck and chest, stroking his freckled belly as he enters in one finger, followed by another and another, distracting the American with gentle lips.

After a few moments he withdraws, Alfred letting out a contented moan and nuzzling into Ivan's cheek. The Russian smiles, genuinely smiles, and tenderly kisses Alfred on the nose.

"Are you ready, my sunflower?"

Alfred smiles and nods, and Ivan takes a breath and began to push into the beautiful warmth, shuddering at the feeling of Alfred all around him, moving in until he is completely within the mewling American.

Ivan starts to thrust shallowly into Alfred, his own breath starting to come into pants as the thrill of the moment courses through him. As he speaks, his words are fragmented by rapid inhales.

"This_____—_is not_____—_real_____—_is it?"

"N-no," the other manages between quickened breaths, "Y-you know that already, don't you?"

Ivan is silent for a moment as he almost completely pulls out before thrusting all the way back in, and Alfred gasps and holds the Russian tighter.

For a few minutes neither says anything, simply listening to each other, Ivan drinking in Alfred's soft pants and Alfred taking in his passionate exhales, until the American puts a hand into Ivan's pale hair, the other cradling the Russian's whitened cheek. Ivan is struck by the sudden sadness in Alfred's eyes.

"Vanya_____—_" Alfred starts, opening his mouth and then closing it as his lips tremble.

"I'm_____—_dead_____—_" Alfred chokes out between whimpers of pleasures, "Don't_____—_don't you understand that_____—_?"

Ivan simply leans in and kisses him, not seeking entrance, merely brushing their lips together to quiet the American. Ivan lifts a hands to cup Alfred's cheek and smiles at Alfred's flushed face and wet eyes as he pulls back.

"No, little one, but it does not matter. I will be dead soon."

It was different than what they had had in the past, but somehow it was still that level of intimacy, but with a new equality, and new peace_____—_

Alfred didn't cry at being filled over and over again, Ivan didn't moan at the depth he could achieve in the dream; save for the whisper of names and the slightest of whimpers, it was near silence, broken only by the rustle of the sunflowers in the small breeze.

_It is perfect._

And Ivan stops, _stops_ for a moment, plants his hands in the dirt besides Alfred's head and just looks at him, body dark under Ivan's shade except for his blushing face and sweat plastered hair that sparkle in the light.

Alfred's eyes slide open, mere slivers of blue, questioning the lack of movement.

"H-hey, Vanya, wha_____—__woah!_" Ivan dives forward and grabs around Alfred tightly, picking up his pace to small, shallow thrusts as he whispers to Alfred, holding him so close that Ivan feels they could almost share the same heart, the same blood, the same warmth_____—_

"_Ya tebya lyubyu_." Ivan whispers into Alfred hair, eyes watery. "I love you I love I love you I love you _I love you_."

Alfred melts in his arms and rubs Ivan's back, the whispers back to the Russian strained with pleasure, but still there.

"_I know. I know. I love you too."_

Ivan nods into Alfred's shoulder and recomposes himself. He draws back and pushes Alfred back against the ground, reclaiming his mouth again as he resumes the former pace of his thrusts, _needing_ to make both Alfred and himself feel good, to completely erase anything hurtful, anything negative and painful and brutal in a flash of white_____—_

Ivan lips finally break from Alfred's as he comes, ecstasy washing over him. Alfred himself releases only seconds after, his body shuddering, his perfect hair tossed about and his perfect eyes glazed in his rush.

Ivan's arms tremble as he loosens his grips on Alfred's hips, the surge of this dream release coursing along his spine into his weakened legs. His chest heaves, sweat standing on his forehead as colored bursts explode in front of his eyes.

Ivan falls exhausted, waiting to be caught in a nest of warm arms and soft hair and gentle words and kisses but instead jolts into the scratchy couch cushions as his eyes blink and swim the world into view.

Ivan tears through the sheets on the couch, tossing them aside, searching for a sign that Alfred had been there. But there is nothing, not even a lingering scent of sweat and sunflowers. Ivan palms a damp hand through his hair, his breath quickened. He drags the hands down his face and sighs at their coolness.

_Alfred felt so real, he had felt real and wonderful in Ivan's hands, he had felt warm and real and he had looked beautiful, he had _felt _beautiful______—_

He had been beautiful. But now that beauty was gone, and Ivan didn't know where it had went.

_Had Alfred______—_had Ivan done_____—_

He doesn't know whether to believe what dream Alfred had said, what he himself had admitted to. Either way, the horror is much the same.

Either way, Alfred is still gone.

Ivan cannot handle being apart from him much longer.

* * *

_"Karma can't control the beast_

_I've born to swallow us whole."_

_

* * *

_

**There hasn't been a lot of Ivan/Alfred interaction thus far in this story, but its a relief to write it again! I love these two so much. :) even in this shitty situation they're both so goddamn adorable. **

**Ivan is breaking my heart at this point :( Even though this chapter is more fluffy I feel that makes it sadder, cause you get inside of what Ivan had and what he is missing…He's also beginning to realize that he had a hand in Alfred's death, although perhaps not to the actual extent yet...**

**Two more chapters, and Vanya's shield of denial is starting to crack. How's it all gonna go down?**

**Please read and review! The more reviews I get, the more inspired I am to work on chapters, and thus the more quickly they will come out!**


	10. Healing

**Here we are, folks, we're at the second to last chapter here. Are y'all excited? Cuz I sure am. It's been a hell of a ride!**

**Short chapter is short. But it's hella important. This chapter essentially sets up how the story is going to end. Our poor Vanya finally comes to a terrible realization….There's some brief gore at the end, but nothing else in terms of a warning. And angst. Lots of angst. But you already know that.**

**.**

**Ch 9: Healing**

* * *

_"Baby maybe you've got something_

_I think that maybe we're on to something big,_

_Bigger than I could have ever imagined."_

* * *

Ivan growls through the pain, uninfected hand grabbing onto the coffee table in an effort to pull his weighty body up, to put him back on his feet. He can feel the muscles in his legs clenching and cramping, knees shaking from___—_ what? From illness? From what _sickness_?

Ivan's movements are absent, even as he grits his teeth in concentration, as his mind is still somewhere else, still taking him back to last night's dream. What it had meant.

It doesn't make any sense. Last night he had found Alfred, had found him and held him and made love to that precious body, but yet when Ivan had woken up and traversed the house for any signs of the tiny American, he had found none. And then, all of a sudden his legs had given out in the living room and he had crumpled to the floor.

Finally, after what felt like hours of ache and weakness the strength finally comes back to his legs, halting the shaking and allowing him to rise to his feet. Though the newfound physical wellness cannot quite alleviate the throbbing memory inside his head

Ivan found himself struggling with some of the things that dream Alfred had said. Dream Alfred, who had said he was dead, said he was gone forever___—_

But _how_ had Alfred, how could he have___—_

Could he___—_ could Ivan have___—_

_No_.

Ivan had told it to Alfred in his dream. He loved him. Loved him more than anything. He had sacrificed his own life for Alfred.

Ivan takes in a harsh breath. Every time he thinks of Alfred recently his chest tightens, his breath shortens, and he feels his throat go raw.

Ivan wheezes, clutching onto the doorframe, leaning up against it.

_Beautiful Alfred, flushed and wanton and gorgeous beneath him____—_

Ivan gasps for breath, leaning his forehead against the frame, clutching at his chest with his uninfected hand.

"Alfred...Fredka…" He feels a wetness cling to his eyes as he tries to compose himself, bringing thoughts away from Alfred to stave off the pain. He grits his teeth angrily. The physical pain had not bothered him before, _why did it hurt so badly now?_

He feels something gnawing at his stomach and decides to respond to it. Anything, anything to take his mind off of Alfred. For the first time in weeks, Ivan actually feels the pang of hunger.

Ivan hobbles into the kitchen, cradling his left arm against his chest. The wound in his wrist was hurting more than ever, the pain making Ivan slow, sluggish. There were moments when the Russian's eyes began to blur, or when he became dizzy and had to sit down, chest heaving, for a few moments.

Ivan grips the counter tightly as he scours the kitchen. Mentally, he imagines himself cooking for Alfred as he pulls utensils out from the cupboards with shaking hands, his little sunflower's voice ringing in his ears, because he had heard it so clearly, so perfectly last night___—_

His chest pangs again.

Ivan turns on the stove, clumsily dumps some oil into the pan, and sets out the long, flat butchers knife that he had found in one of the drawers onto the wooden cutting board.

But as he moves over to the refrigerator and puts his hand on the handle, Ivan freezes.

He hadn't looked at the fridge, obviously, in a very long time, considering he had been simply living off of store bought vodka and air up to this point.

There is a picture put up on the refrigerator, a standard rectangle of white paper, held up by the magnet of a brilliant yellow sun that he briefly remembers had been bought for him as a birthday present. He recalls, the day before _all of this had begun_, only hours before he held Alfred for the last time, the young American had been making a big fuss over the paper, which he had chosen to display proudly in their kitchen.

Ivan had not given it much thought when he had put it up, as he was too busy slipping his hands under Alfred's sweatshirt to feel the curves of his stomach underneath, softened with the thin remaining layer of baby fat that made Ivan want to squeeze him to his body like a down pillow and never let go, to behave like a young child holding their favorite teddy bear close___—_

_"Hey! Vanya, stop it for a sec, will ya? Don't you want to look at the picture?"_

_Ivan noses the American's ear from behind and sighs. _

_" Что? Picture? Picture of what?"_

_Alfred squirms as Ivan's hands trail upward to glide along his chest. _

_"W-well, it's of you and me____—_ "

_"Why must I be looking at pictures? I am having my little one right here."_

Ivan fades out of the memory and instead focuses on the picture. Alfred's skills at drawing had always left much to be desired, as the American pop styles he was so proud of were hardly derived from reverent European forms, and were barely anatomically correct. Still, the colored pencil drawing of Alfred and Ivan, holding hands and standing in front of a crudely drawn house with swirls of grey smoke coming from the chimney, the entire thing dabbed in glitter and bathed under a highlighter-yellow sun, was endearing in its childishness, and the numerous erased lines of colored pencil showed that the American had clearly placed a lot of time into making it, from his point of view, _perfect_.

Ivan smiles at the idea of Alfred, a grown man and a _nation, _nevertheless agonizing over the details of his colored pencil masterpiece.

It was so perfect, so utterly Alfred, that Ivan feels that if he touches it he may be able to grasp a little bit of Alfred's warmth and comfort.

Ivan reaches out, touches the picture, and stops.

_Hands_.

His are cold and pale, lifeless except for the pulsing bruises around his wrist wound, just like___—_

_Hands, hands that touch, hands that hurt, hands that squeeze and shake and choke, hands that-hands that kill____—_

He clenches them, looking at the shaking fists, cold, chapped lips parting to bare teeth.

_Hands____—_ it was all the fault of these hands___—_

And something _snaps_ in his head.

Alfred's___—_ _Alfred's body____—_ his hands on Alfred's throat, choking his precious sunflower to death, Alfred gasping his name, trying to throw him off, struggling and fighting until he stilled, then Ivan leaving him crumpled on the floor and fleeing in his hazy panic, wandering the neighborhood in the night and finally collapsing on the grass___—_

Coming back and finding Alfred cold and still, but _no,_ it was impossible, _no no no no no_ he couldn't have, it couldn't have been _Ivan_ who crushed his beautiful flower___—_

There had never been any vengeance to be had, Ivan had never been a martyr, no, _no_, Ivan was nothing, Ivan was___—_ a _murderer____—_

His breathing comes harder, faster.

He had done it. He had. Nobody else. Alfred was gone, Alfred was _dead_ and it was all the fault of the hands, all the fault of his hands, his hands that had torn away the most precious creature in all of existence_-_that had ripped out his own sun from his sky and sent his world's orbit askew.

Ivan bites his lip until it bleeds and resists the urge to scream, because _screaming he had already done enough screaming, he had screamed until he was empty and now all he felt was a numbing throbbing anger in his chest and screaming wouldn't help, wouldn't help the feeling wouldn't bring Alfred back to him____—_

He grabs his wounded hand as if it's an enemy, as if it has attacked him and slams it on the cutting board, breathing heavily as he stares at the hateful things and _stares and stares and stares and he knows what he has to do____—_

His right hand is lined with thick red lines creeping outwards, trailing up the length of his arm from the wound on his wrist, the edges of which have begun to turn black. Ivan imagines that it would hurt more if his body was not already numb, if his body hadn't been numb for weeks now. He clenches his left hand and watches the veins bulge out from the pale skin. This hand was still healthy, this hand _could still feel pain____—_

He releases the grip on his right wrist and instead places his healthy, left hand onto the wooden board. His ring fingers gives an involuntary twitch, as if it was an animal, struggling away from its inevitable slaughter.

Ivan picks up the carving knife in one hand, a gift from his sister many years ago. He holds it in his shaking right hand, barely able to keep a firm grip as his fingers tremble from infection. He didn't think about repercussion and consequences, he didn't have to wonder how he would survive with only one grossly infected hand, all he knew was that he had to get the hand away from him, to sever the foreign and treacherous limb from his body___—_

He puts the knife to the skin of the hand on the counter, tracing the line across his wrist back and forth without yet putting any pressure on it.

He grits his teeth and narrows his eyes and feels them wet as he presses the point of the knife into his flesh.

_Alfred____—_ I'm so sorry.

His waning strength doesn't fail him in this final act. The spurt of red arches gracefully in the air before splattering on the white linoleum of the floor.

* * *

_"But I feel like I forgot something,_

_I'm thinking maybe I'm missing something big,_

_Bigger than I could have ever imagined."_

* * *

**Are you guys ready for the grand finale? I really can't believe this fic has made it this far. **

**The picture thing was a little random, but its been floating around in my head since about chapter two and I wanted to put it in somewhere. And besides, Ivan needed a trigger object to go absolutely nuts. **

**If you read, please review! I don't like to beg, but if you review, it really lets me know that people are reading and enjoying! And thus I will feel more motivated to make my work its best, and end this sucker with a bang!**


	11. Dying

**Here we go guys! It's the last chapter! WOOOOOO. I can't believe it! I hope I did well..honestly I was a bit of a perfectionist on it, which was why it took so long…**

**For the first time, we will have a chapter done almost entirely from someone else's point of view. No, it's not Alfred-although that would be a good idea! ha…**

**Some of the dialogue hear is taken from this particular song on the album, cause I felt it was appropriate. **

**Ominous chapter title is ominous.**

**.**

**Ch 10: Dying**

* * *

_"Picture yourself in a nightmarish scene of such_

_Grotesque complexity that you'd kill to be dreaming."_

* * *

Virginia is beautiful this time of year.

England notices the change in the air as he stands in front of Alfred's house. Spring is slowly starting to give into summer, the light wispy scent of the air giving into the crisp, clear smell of the new season. His eyes sting as he thinks of the summer.

_Because it was his favorite season, because this will be the first summer without him. _

Arthur can't imagine the wreck that'll he'll be once July comes around.

He looks up at the small suburban house in front of him, framed against dying glows of the red sunset.

He wasn't quite sure why he had come to Alfred's house. It certainly wasn't to talk to that _filthy, murdering_ Russian. Arthur grits his teeth. But the problem of Ivan would soon be done with, and Arthur could try to move on, once justice had finally been served.

Arthur frowned at that thought. He had had a brief moment of vindication after sentencing Russia to his death, but now_—_now it settled heavy and uncomfortable on his conscience, even though he knew he was guilty_—_

Arthur feels a twinge as he wonder whether Alfred would have sentenced Russia to die.

Alfred_—_perhaps that was why the Englishman was here. Alfred wouldn't have wanted him to be consumed with hate and anger-even if it was directed towards his murderer. After all, it had always been difficult for the American to hold a grudge. He had forgiven so many_—_Kiku, Ivan, Arthur himself_—_and turned them into friends, _family_.

The thought of the happy and exuberant smile that he'll never see again makes his stomach twist. Never again seeing the little boy he had raised from infancy makes him sick.

It's something he won't ever forget. Holding his son's cold body to his chest, crying and begging for him to wake up, to just _breath_ and open his eyes. To call him any one of his stupid nicknames, so Arthur could retort back. Then they would argue, and then Alfred would try to make it up to him, to invite his father-brother-friend-_whatever_ out for drinks. That's what Alfred always tried to do with him. Always tried to bury the hatchet.

Arthur sighed and put his hands into his coat pockets. _Was that it? Was he here to try to get rid of bad blood? Was he here to settle with the Russian, to put them both at peace?_

Arthur didn't feel that Ivan deserved peace. But, perhaps, at least he could clear the air enough to keep his own guilt at bay.

He takes a deep inhale, trying to stem his shaking breath. No, he'd do it for Alfred, because it would be what his son would do.

Suddenly, a new smell in the summer air brings England out of his thoughts. A smell that he grudgingly knows all too well.

The scent of something burning.

Alarmed, Arthur strides up the walkway to Alfred's door, first peppering it with knocks. He gets no answer, but notices that the smell has gotten stronger, that it seems to be coming from within Alfred's home_—_

_Damn it, he wasn't about to let the soon-to-vanish Russian burn down Alfred's house!_

He grabs the doorknob and jiggles it furiously, frustrated when it does not open. But England was no weakling, despite the trials of the previous century, and the long dormant muscles of the British Empire came into handy as he broke the lock of the door open.

Initially, Arthur speeds through the house at a desperate pace to find the source of the burning smell, but stops upon getting to the kitchen. The pretty whiteness of the counter and floor is splattered red, puddling in a large stain on a wooden cutting board and dripping down the cupboards, pooling on the linoleum. A carving knife sits embedded into the floor, red smeared along the blade and up and down the handle. And next to it_—_

Arthur's legs feel weak and he grabs onto the counter for support. _Oh God, oh God-next to the bloodied knife was a large, pale hand, curled up in the final throes of agony as its owner had cut it off from the stream of life__—_

_Something awful has happened here._

Call an ambulance, the rational part of his brain says, _something's not right, something's definitely happened here__—_

But some sick curiosity beckons at him to venture through the rest of the house. Before he leaves the kitchen, he notices where the burning smell had come from: a frying pan on the hot stove, a hole burned through the bottom. England turns off the burner with a grimace.

His legs have all the strength of heated butter as he follows the splatters of blood out of the kitchen and into the main hall, stopping at the foot of the stairs leading upwards.

The stairs are dribbled with red, leaving a bread crumb trail up to the second floor. Gulping in fear at what he is sure to find, Arthur makes his way up to the above landing.

The trail leads right into Alfred's room, the door of which is only half shut, the frame liberally smudged with a handprint of blood.

Arthur puts a hand over his nose, almost retching at the scent that hits him.

_The smell is overpowering, a foul pungent odor, like rotten food or I don't know, possibly something worse__—__but there's something else that's almost overpowering, I think it's__—__is it cologne?_

Arthur hesitates before Alfred's door, his sanity telling him _no_ _don't go in there, something's wrong, something's wrong wrong wrong__—_

He presses the door the rest of the way open, and was hit with an overwhelming wave of the stench, choking slightly as the thick scent became clearer.

_The smell of blood. The smell of bodies. The smell of rotting flesh. _

Smells that every nation reviles but recognizes out of pure instinct.

England hears a harsh breathing that appears to come from all around upon crossing over the doorjamb. The room still has Alfred's characteristic messiness, clothing and bedsheets all over, glass shards on the floor by the bathroom. He notices that all the sheets of the bed have been pulled off, twisted into the crook between the bed and the wall that Arthur can't see_—_

Hand still over his mouth, Arthur crosses on shaky legs to the nook between the bed and the wall, preparing himself for what he might see, the source of the pained breathing that gets louder and louder with every step.

He puts a hand on the bed and leans over to look into the darkened space.

Bile rises in his throat.

_By God._

Ivan is a sight, half twisted into blood stained bedsheets, his pale hair matted to a forehead coated in sweat; purple eyes that once glowed now dull and dusky-looking. The Russian's hands, or what is left of them, are visible, and Arthur cringes at the sight. One is blackened and thick looking, with bulging red veins running up the unsheathed length of his arm. The other, the Englishman notes with a sick twist in his stomach, is completely gone, with only a trickling red stump in its wake, pooling blood onto the Russian's chest and stomach.

"G-good Lord, Ivan_—_"

Arthur gets on his knees and crawls next to the larger man, hands hesitant, as if unsure if they should touch him or not. Ivan turns his head at the sound of the Englishman's voice, and Arthur freezes as the purple gaze descends on him.

The Russian is murmuring something that Arthur can't hear, the same mantra over and over again, cracked white lips around pinking teeth.

_Sorry_.

"Ivan?"

_S-so sorry._

"Ivan, what the hell did you do?"

_Alfred, I'm sorry, p-please forg__—_

Ivan lets out a horrible, violent cough, body seizing. Red trickles from his nose and ears, his chest shuddering, the pool of red on his stomach splashing and spilling over his sides.

Arthur suddenly becomes aware that the entire time the scent of the cologne had been overwhelming the scene, seeming to radiate from Russia's skin itself, as if he had been bathed in it. The musk covers up everything, the smell of the blood, the infection, even the lingering smolder from the mess in the kitchen.

Ivan looks up at him dazedly, labored breathing coming out and in, smelling rank. Arthur wrinkles his nose.

"Russia_—_Ivan, why_—_?"

Arthur flinches as the Russian reaches for him with the grossly infected hand and grabs a fistful of shirt, pulling him down. Arthur is hit with the rotting stench of Ivan's breath again, and from this angle sees the thick red veins pulsing up the neck under his stained and frayed scarf.

And he deduces from the dazed and glassy look and the pinpricks of red in the Russian's eyes that Ivan probably can't even see him or understand who he is, his brain so pumped full of bacteria.

_But somehow__—__he's smiling__—_

It's not the coy, childish little smile Ivan put on for the rest of the world, but a tiny, genuine little grin, so delicate that Arthur feels it could shatter at any moment.

Ivan lets go of the Englishman's shirt but his hand continues to travel, up the side of his face until he's playing with the blonde hair. Arthur lets him, knowing the Russian is on the verge of disintegration, and there's nothing left for him to do but let the delusional and addled man live out his final moments. Despite his anger, despite all the hate that he had been building up towards him over the months since Alfred's death, Arthur feels _sympathy_ for Ivan.

And Ivan's fingers continue to roam through Arthur's hair, the little strands so delicately slipping through his grasp. His lazy violet eyes widen in glazed wonderment as he loops his fingers through it.

He sees fields of sunflower in the tresses of that blonde hair. He sees so many things in Arthur's face and in the room and beyond, things that make him feel wonderfully at peace, even as he bled out and over his body and the sheets. At this point, it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. They are much the same pallor, and both very much stained in blood.

But Ivan doesn't feel; he doesn't feel the sheets constricting his body, cutting off all remaining blood. He doesn't even feel his fingers as they ceaselessly run through England's hair. He doesn't hear England, he doesn't see England, he doesn't feel England.

Ivan doesn't feel anyway, but this time it's okay. It's because his mind is so far beyond the feelings of his body.

Ivan doesn't occupy himself with any weighty, metaphysical thoughts either, as he lies on the floor. As he slowly died, Ivan found himself not caring about any of that.

Ivan never thought about what happened to nations after they died. He had no anxiety over the existence of an afterlife. He never thought about, if such an afterlife existed, whether he would be allowed in given the countless terrible things that he had done in his life; all the sunshine that he had taken away. He never thought about whether he would face punishment worse than death for his crimes. He never thought about whether he would disappear, dissolve into black and leave nothing behind but an infected corpse.

Ivan never thought about any of those things because they didn't matter. Any rational thought had been past his dying brain long before Arthur entered the room.

Hours before, as Ivan had laid his body down to rest in the same place where Alfred had lost his own life, he had seen the blurring, dark room dissolve away to free, open blues skies. Instead of looking to the blood dribble down his severed forearm, he looked at the bobbing heads of the yellow flowers, instead of tearing at his precious scarf in pain he inhaled the soft scent of soil, instead of clawing at the infected wounds on his arms his naked fingers touched the blooming stems, and caught loose petals in the wind. Instead of watching as his eyes began to blur in death he stood off, just outside of the beautiful patch of yellow before him, still detached from this oh so beautiful world, watching Alfred; sweet, tanned, perfect, _unscathed_ Alfred, as he bent and tended to the bright young flowers, watering them with care and stroking their petals and speaking to them quietly as if telling secrets.

And as Ivan finally feels the hands holding him back fall away, as he feels the explosive pain in his chest dull to a soft, spreading warmth, Ivan descends from whatever vista he was observing Alfred from and settles amidst the sunflowers. Alfred back is still turned so Ivan rushes up besides him and grabs the American tightly around the waist, and Alfred yelps playfully but relaxes into the hold because he knows who he is, who else could it be_—_?

And Ivan has picked him up, but this time Alfred is alive, Alfred is moving and smiling and laughing and wrapping his arms around Ivan and then kissing him, and Ivan can't find it in himself to cry or laugh or do anything except kiss Alfred back because he know that now he is finally forgiven.

* * *

_"We were inseparable."_

* * *

**The glorious end!**

**Sorry for those of you who wanted Ivan to end up with Alfred . ): I **_**did**_** say no happy endings, after all. But, I guess Ivan's can be a lil happy…at least he was kind of with Alfred in the end. At least he died happy. **

**Well I for won am grateful for all of my readers who have stuck with me from beginning to end-and those who found this story at whatever point along the way. You guys are my fuel! And I hope you all stick around to see what else that I have planned. :D I post a lot of drabbles that don't get put up here on my tumblr, so if you want to see some of them, go follow me there!**


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